Trespassing in the King-Abernathy Suite

My written life is short lived
like those musicians who just lived too fast
to have normal life spans.

Just a blip in the library of history,
my story is insignificant,
I’m just another ball of lead
out of the countless billions
to be stuffed in a barrel
and fired at an unsuspecting target.

Except I’m claustrophobic.

I hate the smell of gunpowder and sweat
that collects in the chamber.
I’m allergic to closed spaces,
and the second that
they put me in the metal prison,
I want out.

I could not say how long
I stayed in that cell.
My body became pitted
and the smell of ammunition took
the place of the scents of home.

They must be saving me for a special occasion.

And all of a sudden I’m free,
flying through the air
at the speed of superman.
I can hear the air as it whistles past,
an audience clapping in ovation to my passing.

I flirt with the sound barrier,
who laughs and asks me to speed up
if I have any chance of catching her.

I chew threw way too many meters a second
to be under the legal limit,
but before I am arrested,
I come to a smashing halt against bone
and spinal column.

I did not know anything after going
supernova in that cranium.

I could not get that the brain I entered
in a destructive display of fireworks
was greater than the brain who used me.

I didn’t hear that I rang out in such a low note
that whales came from as far away as
Northern Europe the mourn.

I didn’t see the dream inside that brilliant mind
that inspired millions to find compassion
when others reached for violence.

I did not know how I changed the world.