Blood is red and runs
violent. On the evening news,
Dan Rather warns when we should
look at out chicken cacciatore,
tangled with red and green
pepper ribbons, rather than
the idiot box, where a rescue
team bend over tiny limp
figures, red speckled white,
in Oaklahoma or
a patch of brown curdled
snow on an Italian slope.
We need to be protected from the idea
the blood runs freely in most parts
of our planet. On all seven continents.
It’s brutal, blood is.
Some blood is weak, some thicker
than water. My grandmother had
diabetes, so she had to keep
her blood sugar free.
Mine, on the other hand,
is too thick and rich., like
a banana double-chocolate milkshake:
it can’t get through the straw.
Pot-bellied and bull-headed
as a Capone-style gangster, my hemoglobin
takes its sweet time trudging
through my capillaries. It terrorizes
the populace, roughs up organs, smashes
arterial walls, leaves peach and green
bruises on my wrists, and stops traffic
indefinitely for a street party in my veins,
with shady associates in gold pinkie rings
and a slender blond moll in tow. The good
citizen commuters it leaves in chaos
to spull into any cavity: eye,
sinus, mastoid bone. Blood has no regard
for the rules.
So never let it be said that blood
doesn’t have cards up its sleeve,
its own agenda and hidden avenues
where it can motor off and never return to
anything like normal. Blood lives
the way it pleases, regardless
of a body, of flesh.
