Gun smoke – June 2025

Between the felt of the heart
and its velvet-roped veins
sits a fatty layer
of lipid-remembered ephemera —

grease stains.
Cave frescas smudged into the window
stenciled in cheeks and fingertips
by past passengers passing by
to be wiped away, slept away, or shooed away
like the fly at the movies,
by wind chance,
past velvet-corded
stanchion, brought in, caught in
the midst of lense and action,
between drama and projector's divination.
Shifting as a shadow above the cracks
of rapid fire light —

gun smoke.
Drifting up away
from both hunter and his prey;
it settles, clears, and cleans
the whispy traces of the temporary.
All's well and good, but
below the bullet blows
penetrate what fat may lay
to blood that fuzzy organ —
drench it dead.