Corinna A-Maying the Apocalypse: Poems

Orienteering in the Land of the New Pirates

Orienteering in the Land of the New Pirates The New Pirates are men who, as infants, told their moms Keep your milk and went and suckled gas pumps. In towns of peril and experience, were the twelve-year olds shrugging It’s an island all around and no water. Coming home to dark houses to moms saying, Baby they turned our lights off. ConEd turned their lights off. And ConEd turned their stove off, turned their heat off. And Citgo sucked the gas from their car. Citgo sucked back the gas from the car as they drove. It wasn’t that they weren’t tender, didn’t want to cry— just, they saved up each yelp and lachrymal drop till they could stick a finger in a socket and light up the house. I am not the fountain of all pity. We were afraid to go near that neighborhood. I thought, with oiled tongues they will smile and kill. Yes, I thought—and is this any better?—but when they do they are so beautiful. Destiny for them is right now and right now and right now and the air with spit hovering in it. Hiding in the town shadows, the air gagged with electrical currents, the cars, the people on the street lagging— even the moon lagging behind the tides— they would come, the New Pirates, sparks in the dark. And the light they make and the light they take is gold. Some say they are a fairytale, yes, but if you could see the latest maps! 53 The world is all dark except for the pulses of natural gas etched in purple the white of fireflies and the golden coils that trace the movements of the New Pirates. Plus the thin red light off one police car chasing them down. If you flipped the switch on that map you would have seen the little boys, New Pirates-at-the-ready, standing in line like for a carnival ride because isn’t adventure always better than stagnant water? —I say this standing waist deep in a swamp. Sure the sludge this time of year is golden. It is a swamp of ancient leaves, logs from ancient forests. It is a few calendars until a seam of coal. The golden sludge I think is a collection of sunlight. It wants only to be stirred. Once upon a time a crew of men robbed ships of the rich on the high rivers, the highrises, the Hoover Dam. Their treasure was energy, their loyalty to—living? It sounds stupid. We were afraid to even go near that neighborhood. Still, if I had a son, I’d want him to be a New Pirate. He’d be exhausted, always too thin, but that’s an honest heartbreak. I wouldn’t want my boy to think the world is kind. Wouldn’t want him to think his games have no dark side. The mothers in the tale were always supermarket braggarts— My boy was the first to mechanize his fist. My boy rides a windmill when he needs impetus. blah blah blah, he surfs on oil slicks. 54 My boy says energy is the only life. There goes my son, New Pirate Lawrence, spinning with an electric swarm of boys. He doesn’t leave me for the seas but for the black muck of beaver dams and the light studs of unstable atoms—but for a spark. And a spark to a small burn or not. A spark to a small burn or naught. I imagine this waist deep in a swamp. Or am I the swamp, wanting only to be stirred? And who is the man on the map in the dark eating out the heart of the swamp? 55 ...