By Erich von Hungen
It is like standing on a merry-go-round,
one already moving.
Everything up-and-down, yes, but still
circling a single point, a single grinding,
humming mechanism, a flowing, keeping it all going.
The merry-go-round not carved in wood
or made of painted, plastic chunks
but still a part of it.
The deer, that the three wolves
leap at and catch in flight
and divide, all apart -- all, all,
as the howling music blends
with their growls and grudge,
with the lapping sounds as they suck up
the warm, thick red.
That flowing kept it going,
that now flows into them.
Round and round circling in
a forest fairgrounds,
there on a carousel of sorts.
Round and round.
The bear that tears the bison open and apart,
that's turned from dark cinnamon to deepest red
around it's mouth and snout, its paws, its chest.
Up and down, death and life --
the blood, the blood.
That, specifically reused, recycled
goes on and on.
The hunter too.
He holds the bear, that one eating,
in his sights as the bear holds
the bones and grease up close and inspects.
And though he misses the shot,
his family eats burgers just off the grill
from a converted gas station diner
not far from home.
The blood -- juice, they call it -- the monster part
goes round and round with onions now and mustard --
the red that was once a cow. Happy, hungry as wolves,
they have to wipe the 4-year-old's chin and lips.
Round and round. Recycled, reused.
It circles on and on the whole big mechanism
and the music too.
The monster part that won't give up.
Erich von Hungen currently lives in San Francisco, California. His writing has appeared in The Colorado Quarterly, The Write Launch, The Ravens Perch, From Whispers To Roars, Punk Noir, Hearth and Coffin, Not Deer Magazine, Sledgehammer, Anti-Heroin Chic and others. He has written four collections of poems. The most recent is "Bleeding Through: 72 Poems Of Man In Nature". You can find him on Twitter.