AK-47

AK-47: Mikhail’s Tractor

He works, hump-backed, industrial plumbing ugly,
but the sturdy steel Babushka in her wool and fur
loves him like her own son.

He never comes home drunk, but works long hours
plowing the sun-stunted African grass
in hard Mozambique hands.
He works in parade boots made by
the thin trigger fingers of bird-light Viet girls.
In dull Serbian mud, while libraries burn,
he pops a worker’s cap in the a$$ of empire
full-metal Mao jacket Afghan War Rug.

No velvet-boxed dandy dueling pistols, any more,
no frock-coated seconds on English lawns,
honor is a commodity now, shipped in packing grease.

Just the work of planting lead seeds in the furrows of killing fields.
Mowing the lawns of banana cocaine money company campuses
this Sickle reaps rows of white cross crops sown thirty rounds at a time.

No Barbie Doll plastic on this gun, but the good wood and steel
bones and blood of a working man’s long Hammer.
No John Deere green Indiana paint and gloss, but in the
Crip Blood blue black stamped steel and cheap red varnish, he works.