THE BALLAD OF BUSHMEAT AND ROADKILL
or
A Treatise on Ecological Disaster
Bushmeat and Roadkill
walk into a bar
Toasting with sour bourbon they savor
the burn and belly fire
which lights up their
dwindling eyes
then slam
their bar glasses
down for another one
Roadkill plays Rampage on the jukebox
she splinters a pool cue
picking her teeth
with the shards
Bushmeat runs his tongue through
the card reader
gumming up the works
Carnage shows up
by way of his truck
through the front window
taking out the jukebox
The three of them meet outside
and get lost in the
echoes of the moon
in the gasoline pools
forming on the asphalt
from the truck’s shattered gas tank
Bushmeat gets it into his head to howl
So they each do that for a bit
Carnage is antsy so he
rummages in his truck for his 45s
lights the gasoline on fire
and sets up to pick off
the patrons as they
flame out the doors
Roadkill muses that this scene
is over for her
and she could do
with a tongue down her throat
So she takes Bushmeat
into the jungle
for a fuck fest
There she is
captured
by his eyes
held
by the flicking reflections of the fire
consumed
by the green and gold
filtered through the fading foliage
Backstory
A few years ago I made a trip to Africa. “Bushmeat” consumed me…no, not in any gastronomic sense. It was the whole thing, running the gamut from a sustainable lifestyle for a few, supporting a high-end dining “adventure,” and contributing to species devastation. And the word itself: bushmeat. It’s evocative, the consonants pop your lips. It’s vaguely onomatopoeic; it sounds aggressive.
I knew there was a poem there, but for several years I was stymied. I tried writing a poem that followed an animal from the bush to a plate at a high-end restaurant, using an incredibly expensive self-contained, battery-powered cooler as a metaphor linking the bush to the table. It just didn’t work. It sparked several notes to self: You aren’t writing a short story.
Sometimes words, phrases, and ideas are just bones for me; I can’t stop gnawing on them. My wife is heavily into animal conservation, so following the ongoing devastation of our natural world is a recurring undertone in our conversations.
One day I was in the car with my daughter and complaining about the elusiveness of a poem about bushmeat. In passing, she commented on seeing a dead animal, roadkill. A gong went off in my head: Bushmeat and Roadkill. To a poet’s ear they are almost the same word. They sound kind of the same, they look similar, and they refer to similar processes. I just kept turning them over in my head. OK, it wasn’t just in my head; my daughter got a little fed up with me repeating them in increasingly excited tones.
I was still stuck, though. Bushmeat and roadkill, where was the poem? I started brainstorming phrases. Eventually, one of them contained a violent image, and I suddenly knew that this was the key. Violence and death are inherent in both words–bushmeat/roadkill– and also in the destruction of animals and habitat. Given the burning of forests and jungles, I knew that fire would play an important role in the poem. At the time, I was also working on a joke poem about “The Pope, a Rabbi, and a Rock Star walk into a bar.” Substitute Bushmeat and Roadkill, and I was off to the races.
I just started writing, committed only to violence. I had a suspicion it would end in a sexual encounter, mirroring a common occurrence in violent death, as the genes seek re-creation, but I had no idea how it would get there. Carnage bursting through the wall of the bar was a complete surprise, but his picking up pistols and shooting people was a natural act of revenge (after a bit of howling). And then, of course, the two of them ended up in the forest.
I made up the band name Rampage on the spot. I was delighted to discover the band existed and was a perfect choice of music.
This poem was a catharsis for me. I felt wild and unconstrained, voicing an animal cry of despair, dreaming of survival while surrounded by death. Adding the “The Ballad of …” to the title was a late addition that just felt right.
Of course, readers of the poem seldom made the ecological connection; I just got very strange looks – and remarks – about the violence. The second title seemed like an important pointer for the reader: No, it’s not just violence, there is method to it.