{"id":2686,"date":"2012-06-27T09:38:12","date_gmt":"2012-06-27T13:38:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gadflyonline.com\/wpblog\/?p=2686"},"modified":"2012-07-30T15:08:45","modified_gmt":"2012-07-30T19:08:45","slug":"fanfare-for-the-artillery-god-and-other-poems-by-timothy-schumacher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/fanfare-for-the-artillery-god-and-other-poems-by-timothy-schumacher\/","title":{"rendered":"Fanfare for the Artillery God and Other Poems"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Fanfare for the Artillery God<\/strong><\/p>\n

I. Am. The piston.
\nRun famine fingers through pools of molten lead vomit
\nthat pooled lazily from one hundred toothless mouths
\nI. Am. The piston that pounds cities to dust.
\nShoulder deep in offal
\nPull out my shrapnel, pull out my uranium!
\nI. Am. The piston that flattens farmlands into minefields.
\nPull out my metallic womb for my radioactive
\nHuman savior!
\nI. Am. The piston that cracks the Earth\u2019s core.
\nFor I am the factory born of the factory and my guts
\nroar and clank and spark.
\nI. Am. The piston that pounds holes in ozone girls.
\nI\u2019ll peel back my skin as a favor and show off my flawless
\nstainless steel cheek bones,
\npolished with marrow and plasma.
\nI. Am. The piston that punctures the sky rolled up like a scroll
\nWatch the iron,
\nrich blood pump to the mechanistic beating!
\nI. Am. The piston.<\/p>\n

Methane Genesis<\/strong><\/p>\n

I grow in a sewer
\nMice crawled through my hair and
\nmethane
\nwrapped me up in a rotten egg blanket every
\nsecond I kept my eyes open.
\nTraveling through that sewer but my
\nfoggy mind played tricks on me
\nfrom my mother.
\nWandering up those tunnels and
\nnever
\nrecall light!
\nKeep searching for my mother
\nwhen she was playing tricks on me
\nHow strongly
\ndid I shove myself through those holes underground?
\nHow long did
\nI crawl through the damp muck and pulled at my sticky
\numbilical cord and thrash and scream
\nat light.
\nThe Vertical Interrogation of the Lotus Eater<\/p>\n

The flesh and blood
\ncarries a name like
\nan affectionately endearing pet name for a trash can
\nemerged from the Midwest.
\nHeartland? Land of
\nstolen kidneys waking up in an ice bath.
\nI stepped out of the zygote soup of sperm and ovum
\nand I really need a shower. But I\u2019m all hairy chested
\nv-shaped GI Joe even still,
\nI\u2019m impenetrable mouthless armor instead
\nand I sweat salty tears.
\nI came from where you came from
\nOut of the pink frilly perfume jungle!
\nMistakes laugh for years at me
\nI can\u2019t hear them lust at me.
\nI cut off my juiced up lips too.
\nLiquids molding my form to my box
\naround me, I\u2019m a cushy sweet oval as I am a two armed
\nlimp legged animal.
\nPoof is my birth instantaneously meaningless
\nlike the woman that used a masculine joke
\nfor an umbrella in a hail storm.<\/p>\n

Caligula Arrives<\/strong><\/p>\n

Escape, run, down the
\nRhine,
\nSharp spear points, mechanically
\nthrusting, pounding longswords at your back.
\nWisp of blackened air belches from
\nyour nostrils.
\nOn the pockmarked, on the scarred
\nbacks,
\nthose that live
\nawake, trapped
\nunder the weight of smoke.<\/p>\n

Blow without a sound, cooler in the catacomb caves with
\nno sunlight.
\nCoiling around ashen faces,
\nAshes that run through fingers
\nMy last grip on the world.
\nDrift from the fiery womb
\nand snuff out the fire.
\nCrawl along on their backs; they live
\nto carry,
\nthe Viper won\u2019t be wrenched from Earth
\nthat was nursed by the breast of Rome,
\nfrom nymphomaniac orgies and centaur slaughter.<\/p>\n

Step on lakes of toes and
\nthen bathe in fermented copper wine.
\nDrift again, drift again into the smoke
\nMake an arm from the ashes of slave thighs we threw into the oven.
\nThe satyr reappears!
\nEyes drawn down to the bow legged nymph of
\nRome, rise Tiberius,
\nhail Gaius Germanicus,
\nHail Caesar Caligula!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fanfare for the Artillery God I. Am. The piston. Run famine fingers through pools of molten lead vomit that pooled lazily from one hundred toothless mouths I. Am. The piston that pounds cities to dust. Shoulder deep in offal Pull out my shrapnel, pull out my uranium! I. Am. The piston that flattens farmlands into […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,219,199],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2686"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2686"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2686\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3606,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2686\/revisions\/3606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}