“Your penis is smaller than the smallest cell phone”…. and an unpublished poem

Jack wrote this in June, 2006:

I don’t usually open spam emails, but something about that subject line’s a winner.

All over America, I imagine, men glanced at that heading, did a double take, just as I did, and clicked it open.

Reached for their cell-phones.

Squinted.

Jack

I found this poem in Jack’s papers. It was typed, so probably a final draft, but wasn’t included in Poems of the New Old West. –Jeanne

In chilling heat of steel-gray afternoons
I footprint mud beside metallic waters;
Thoughtless prayers of gratitude
For primrose blemishes
That pock the face of dying winter.

Gunmetal night explodes
In chalkboard hieroglyphs
Of ballistic trajectories.
Drowning cold kaleidoscope;
My shield…defend!  Repel
Just once again
This splinter of
Eternal chaos.