ALLEN EDWIN BUTT

Exoskeletor

Well chop the houses
down for lumber, dis-
encumber picture-perfect
perfect tense & tense up
sphincters under right-to-work
embargoes, while
my right & left wings beat
against the perch. We percolate
in dive-bars for the privilege
of huffing
HuffPo hand-me-downs
from paper bags,
& bag-lunch beauty queens
interpret paintings
of the long-forecast
foreclosure under wraps. If I
were on the DL, I’d assure you
my insurance would
extinguish all your hopes, break
windows in the business precinct, preening
all my feathers till I burst
in flames for free. This gratis
bargaining for kisses in
regalia of the old-guard cut-
&-paste entails more mooring
under streetlights than
the light-of-foot could
foot the bill to pay. But, tonight,
my nickel-plated solid-love
revolver sells
the imprecise schematics
for a fix, & then we’ll scheme
imperiously, spitting fire up
& casing shells back
like the fixed stars
didn’t spin. Spill
everywhere & tempt me
back to spirits, exorcised
& lookin good, where pretty kids
can shave the meat from
unsuspecting skeletons
to sell on-spec & skim
the profits for themselves.
So I declaimed that in the row-boat,
rapt & absent, while the night
around me wept, renouncing
all its Paracelsus monographs
& hope. Yes, I was
a good catch in the boom-time, but
in the post-’08 I’m every mother’s dream.


31   The Paris-American

Allen Edwin Butt is from South Carolina, currently living in Leipzig, Germany.  Publications include InDigest, West Wind Review, Peaches & Bats, and Poetry. He co-edits O'clock Press and its magazine, CLOCK.

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