say you are my enemy
my knife against your neck
why is it happening to you?
why does the sky change color when you watch it
why do the stars move over you
following you
take me
where I stand with you at the horizon
American bushido
Hades opens his mouth
the skeletons raise their hands over your head
rattling their bones like snakes
to welcome you into the catacombs
the rage dimples plastic against your face
like a womb
wrapping paper in the supermarket
go ahead and tear it open
this is your birth
the skeleton inside your body
gives you directions in the nether city
turn right
this door
smile into the camera
here’s your ID
death a vast bureaucracy
you don’t need to remember your name or face
only the sound of the door opening
like a woman’s laugh
tight against your ear
reach into your pocket and take out the knife
tree man
black rain
ocean mapper
the ur-man of the universe
in his thirty heavens
rises above your shoulders
to coordinate your movements
this is Mapuche bushido
god is inside you trying to wake up
don’t wake him up too fast
you’ll startle him
he thinks you’re trying to kill him
and you are
but not yet
behind this sky another one falling into black
your memory from before you were a man
place the knife against my neck
your enemy wants to take everything from you
your blood
your memories
your spirit
he wants the directions you’ve moved in
to erase them
he wants you to be the agent of your own murder
say that I am your enemy
and I am
when I raised my hand you fell into my box
what is the right way out?
is it to open up my neck?
drink my blood?
then I’ll be inside working to destroy you
to confirm the ways you will go into death
and map them
come back out of the tunnel
we’ll put the bones in your hair
the red paint under your eyes
the drug will show you some of our companions who fight with us
in our secret war
turn off the mirror of the sky
look into the inner dark from before you were a man
the earth black and invisible
inside the quiet water
take that dark to shield you from the light
who will lie to you with everything
that you see
in this war of waking