November rain clots in
the fertilized gutter of my
dust packed soul,
existence storms within me
ticker tape thoughts struck by lightning
mad stockholders of cells sunspot through my flesh
reaching to sear the plastic backdrop
through which I walk.

Telling myself of Great Auk stars
does not create enough
petroleum jelly in my mind
to ease the burns from
my inward x-raying eyes--
frog legs of pain
can-can in burlesque of my seriousness.
my stomach unreels in newsreel battle gore,
the nauseating pain creeping onto my face
hidden by the flesh familiar to the eyes
as one Douglas Blazek.

November rain sometimes is freckled by sun
and for that moment onion-faced old women
scurry with shopping carts to get cabbages
but it isn't long before it's pouring again
like crumbling chimneys and the street is hollow
except for the cars that sizzle down the
black mica and erase themselves with the night.

Earth must be a strange place for a mapmaker
a place where the battlefields turn into fertilizer
and children into burnt pudding
rivers turn into drainage ditches
and starvation is a necessary evil
when countries are doing the necessary good
by building tanks and bombs, grenades and bullets--
it is no coincidence the word "kiss" is
spelled so alike "kill".

Ah, but in November it is rain
and my ribs are not barbecuing in radioactive delight
and the kids are wading in boxes of blacks
and fossilized pain is melting in my stomach
and the street is turning into a soft lizard
with red, yellow and green eyes pinballing
along its spine -- my soul floats in
rippling fingers towards the drainage ditch making
the only map I understand.