Butterfly Bullets
You said you couldn’t bring me the book,
You didn’t want to risk getting flagged at the airport.
Why? It’s just poetry.
Because, it might be, would be,
maybe considered
contraband.
Poetry is a semi-automatic rifle,
its maker’s name sounds foreign
its letters look weird,
not what you’d call American.
What is it?
Arabic? Urdu? Farsi?
God forbid, Cyrillic?
Mandarin, figures.
And each chamber contains
incendiary
words
Upon high-velocity impact,
they ignite, extreme heat,
at a thousand Celsius,
the victim’s organs liquefy,
bones splinter
fragments shoot off
might hit a passerby,
another victim.
But that’s a lie,
you know it,
the words reawaken
in the victim,
a long desire
for a brother, for a sister,
a tidal wave sweeps us
in a deep revelation:
we’re united,
and when we open
the book
bullets fly
with butterfly wings.