bullet billet-doux

the first bullets were ball shaped.
that’s why we call them bullets:
boulet is middle french for ‘little ball.’

now we have bullet trains,
bullet points,
number one with a bullet,
and a video technique for freezing action
known as bullet time.

bullets set the bar for mass killing,
especially after the invention of the gatling gun.
the early, exciting, life-ending bullet was the acorn
from which the oak of the atomic bomb grew.

bullets and their progeny test us.
we generally fail the toughness-of-flesh test.
some of us pass the we-can-do-without-them test;
unfortunately, some of us are not enough
and never will be:
either we all pass, or, soon or late,
we’re all gone.

walt disney is responsible for an ersatz second coming
of jesus christ
and the quite real renewed threat
of satan

people with a need not to blaspheme
created new language: one could darn and not damn;
one could visit heck and not hell;
and thus we euphemize the eucharist

“jesus christ!” was defanged
to “jiminy christmas!”
and we saw that it was good
and didn’t hurt

well, along came walt
and with him a big-pale-green-headed waistcoated
mutant offshoot of the family gryllidae
repurposing a wooden boy from pathological liar to honest abelet

“that’s the stuff, pinoc’!” he’d chirp
and victoriously brandish an impossible insect fist
but satan lurked within those innocent cels
with the implication of pulled metastrings

pinocchio could be led by his everlonger nose at will
by a sly fox or his own wannawanna
and so (so the saga goes) it takes another nosegrabber
to steer him to correctness with earwhispered encouragement

darn you, walt
i cannot even daycream [sic[k]] about stuff i’d really rather do
like gettin drunk or profligately laid or bingeing on gamblinfoolery
without your monstrously anthromorphed homunculus buggin me

and i long to be good on my own
by uncoerced choice
chirpless
cricket free