King Arthur's Machete

i pulled up suddenly upon approaching a yellow light 

jolting awake after a falling dream where i drove off 

of the end of the bridge thinking of the visual cliff 

thinking i’d miss the drop and drive over glass to 

my mother’s grinning face i couldn’t tell she was 

screaming telling me to stop often my dreams are 

embarrassingly interpretable like a frost poem that 

actually burns and i run waving my arms sliced  

by branches hanging larger than their skinny torsos 

a machete appears in my hand i swing not expecting 

how much force it actually takes to sever something it 

lodges right in the core of the trunk and i try to pry it 

out sword from the stone thinking that i’d be safer even 

with a weapon i couldn’t wield thinking about how 

frost was proud that he’d managed to make himself 

miserable demoting himself to a traveler that didn’t 

even have a dragon to slay at the end of his journey 

rather the disappointment of realizing success 

doesn’t come until your obituary comes out in the 

newspaper reading poet found dead halfway under the 

underbrush of the road not taken the body already 

many months gone rot beginning in polka dots like 

mold on a piece of bread the fact being not 

about death but about perception like if a face has 

no eyes you can’t tell if it’s smiling or snarling