Tool Users

Morning dark as an armpit.
Our favorite crimes recurred
as we slept, leaving residue
for someone else to scrape up.

Chisels and knives, pliers, tongs.
Always that metal on metal
gnash or clang. Always the pain
seated in some private place

where no one takes the trash out
or changes the blood-stained sheets.
Someone walking on the road
sports a beret, mocking us.

Someone else in the secrecy
of his man-cave loads and unloads
a pistol, places it to his head,
and imagines pulling the trigger.

This person doesn’t mock but
expects us to testify
when he renders the world abstract.
The morning brings too much news—

stalemate in the desert, drama
in the ballpark, highway deaths
in colors too livid to share.
We nod over breakfast, barely

speaking because so warped by sleep
we can’t quite disarticulate.
Chisels rasp into wood or stone.
Knives simper through breakfast meats.

Pliers twist a stubborn wingnut.
Tongs pluck toast from a toaster.
How do you feel about evolving
into a tool-using mammal?

We’ll discuss this when we’re awake
and the rain has finished rinsing
all incriminating evidence
from our secretly naked sky.