Deleted From History by Jay Passer

they called for my head under
boiling skies of mutiny.
a circus escapee locked in a box,
they had me sawing off lengths
for the casket,
to bury the bouquets, boughs of live oaks,
the cinema gone brackish-
an owl on a steeple attempting
to decipher the moon.
I gave up my spine plus the chakras,
a love letter to Buddha signed
Mister X.
I purchased a bicycle sight unseen
off the Internet,
same as my soul mate,
delivered to the door
by the golden-oldie concierge with
peaked cap and creased slacks.
you weren’t on the menu,
never on the boards,
like honey
stored in a whiskey bottle.
and for the finale the
rest of us
deleted from History,
blood trickling from a blasted sky
fields vanquished with
flourishes of opium,
while the 6 o’clock newscaster, meeker
than a field mouse
the message
deadly as a
diamondback.

Jay Passer’s work was first published in Caliban magazine in 1988. He lives in the Tenderloin District of San Francisco, the city of his birth.