It Shall Be Revealed By Fire

I’ve been using this as a journal… I’ve allowed the words to be inspired by the quotidian… but these serious financial problems I’ve encountered… there’s no dark magic there like morning fog over winter creeks there’s no stampede of buffalo riding atop cold winds over fallow soy fields no no no so disgustingly pragmatic it nauseates. Today one of my ducks stepped out from the coop and was surprised by the snow and she took off flying above the fence and down the road and she kept going and going and going and three hundred or so yards down I walked on ice and snow I heard her quacking on a hill and I said here ducky here ducky and she heard me and took off again over the street and down into the valley into the woods there another hundred yards away and I said bye ducky, bye ducky because I knew there’d be no going back. I didn’t like it and I walked home the several hundreds of yards up the road sinking through the ice sheets that couldn’t hold me and she was just a scared girl and I didn’t like this reality it really soured me I didn’t want to accept it but there was little to hope for and I told my wife maybe she’ll find her way back somehow without really believing it. And maybe I’ll find my way back somehow. But there’s no doubt it will have to be through poetry words brush strokes knife strokes these aren’t musings anymore no I can’t get out alive unless I’m shooting bullets and throwing bombs. After I slit the throat of the fifth and final duck on the morning of the wolf moon I turned my back from the death throes I’d had enough of them and went to the chicken yard to sprinkle some scratch and let them out for their breakfast. And I pitched around the matted hay in the coop and collected the eggs and brought them around to the back of the truck with some empty grain bags all to take into the restaurant with me and when I finished I returned to my ducks the four dead ones lying there on the ground and the other hanging upside down from the kill cone. And I took him by the feet and lifted him out and placed him on the ground and he lifted his head and he blinked at me how are you alive I asked my poor boy in disbelief and how he’s suffered I was angry with myself this poor boy what have I done to you there was nothing to be done but to end this error and I straddled him and held his head his blinking and desperate eyes his not quite severed throat making hollow and long and sad quacking and I took the bloodied knife and went back into the past and sawed through my poor boy I’d made my choice but I would have spared him yes I would spare you boy for my sin but I can’t take back what I’ve already done I’m sorry boy and his headless body went into its final throes beneath my legs gripping tightly around the carcass that hasn’t yet understood and the writing is on the god damn wall. But my body doesn’t know it no no there’s still a chance someone or something will lend me money yes yes I’ll rewrite the menus I’ll train the staff I’ll… Every man’s work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is (KJV 1 Corinthians 3:13). And I will build thee a great temple of silver and gold… I will build it! I WILL BUILD IT! I WILL BUILD IT!