deserters 

i love my runaway face.  but i keep 
stapling my flesh to the corkboard so i can
keep an eye on it. 
you drive the car away from the big
battlefield. it is not a metaphor anymore
it is where everyone goes to take out
their disgust. sparrow & bayonette. 
we are not those people. we are hid-in-the-trees 
people. my grandfather was an army man 
& so was his brother. his brother was good at it
which means he died far away from home.
has a grave in a place he never lived 
where the sun grits her teeth. my grandfather 
on the other hand, was a deserter. he left 
for days. turned into a horse. roamed 
& grazed. no one brought him home
but one day he woke up in suburbia. 
his skin was licked clean. no more war just
the tunnels to go back to it. in the united states
a war is always behind some door 
in the house. the oil shrine or the thunder roof. 
i want to follow in a tradition of escape-artists.
people who say, "not with my body."
my grandfather was not a hero. he was 
a man with a walking stick & a love
for owls. he bought a house without
any doors & told us to sleep there. all my childhood
i lived in the room he died in. often he would
arrive as his horse self, trotting along the ceiling,
leaving fractures wherever he went.
of course i enjoy images of a fighter. i am not
a fighter though. i am a cockroach person. 
in the dust, i'll be there. the saddle on
the horse's back. the fog in the mouth 
of a holy submarine.