Michael H. Brownstein’s book, A Slipknot Into Somewhere Else: A Poet’s Journey To The Borderlands Of Dementia, was published by Cholla Needles Press in 2018. He presently lives with his wife in Missouri.
from The Tattoo Garden of Cappela
Now the wheat grass starts to wade away,
the anger in the valley growing softer,
but just beyond the entrance to the Tattoo Garden of Capella,
the motorcycle gang lets go of its vapor,
the Neo Nazis shed the pigmentation of bad behavior,
the cruel sadists let go of the acid in fingers and rhythm,
the dangerous ill, the accrued, the egotist,
the Mad Monsters of Art and Cinema—
and a grand fog settles over the park,
transparent and intimately present,
floating in on a soft breath from the south,
a scarring into the evil poisons in minds and culture,
and then a smattering of laughter and applause.
Take a bow, a voice within the garden,
Bow deeply. We welcome you in your new incantation,
and we welcome you for what you can now become.
Have you ever seen weapons of flesh destruction degrade?
I have. Thick and thin lines crisscrossed gun handles,
sharpened knives, spray cans, baseball bats,
brass knuckles, crowbars, steel toed shoes—
and every weapon each person carried into the garden
disintegrates into a mass of mosaic stone,
river pebble, a rainbow silver crystallized into sunlight.
