Pomegranate Blues
BY WILLIE SMITH I FEBRUARY 20, 2009

The juggler, staring up, fails to glimpse the razor. The assassin slashes. The jugular spurts.

The butterfly wingbeat. The meteor cry. The statue tear in the eye of the beholder unaware of the dew.

The juggler fails to miss with any ball at all beat one. The assassin, at the corner of the juggler's eye, sucks pomegranate seeds. The crowd succeeds at failing, during the suspension of all balls, to notice their member who fingers in a pocket the razor.

Till, balls collected, bow taken, assassin pants thick with blood, fear momentarily pants in the wings—tired as a tire in a tree; as a whore in a war; as what attire the corpse wore.

The crowd disperses. The assassin, head down, curses. The juggler wanders home via taverns to beat the wife.

Holed-up in the basement, the assassin self-impales on rabbit ears, eyeing the news blat the latest sewage. Hopes to appear soon on the tube. Sees himself at last, ears skewering bowels, accurately portrayed—trapped under foul kisses compounded with an entire county fair of drunken bouncing balls.

The juggler and his wife split to parts unknown, two months rent unpaid. Some weeks later somebody discovers the disgust in the basement, finally explaining the smell. But the news that night too busy.

The juggler without the assassin fails. Can't keep aloft ball one. His wife assumes the business, wears both the pants and the balls. The juggler still drunkenly pounds the wife. But now the world stands upsidedown. The gravity war the well has won. Water gushes like young guys on amyl.

Slowly the juggler begins to study to become—because it truly does become him—the assassin.

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