Achilles Didn't Wear Armor

sometimes when the conveyor jams
(often)
I try looking for Jesus' face in
the broken wood pallets
the gears or
the settling clouds of dirt
I make when I rip and tear
apart those boards. and when things
are real bad
(more often than the conveyor
jams), my skin hardens and
bronzes over my
soft pale flesh and I'm
tougher than fuck like
Achilles, yeah like the colossus of
the factory. so when they raise me
up to crucify me from those
forklift beams, those iron
spikes of redemption, for production's
sake, I will not bleed for
them -- no, my armor is
tougher than fuck like
galzanized hearts & pipe bomb dreams.
weld me to your cause and
I will carry everything tonight on
my spikes of pain and lost time -- and
when my olive shell starts to
b r eak I'll remember that
Achilles didn't wear armor and I will
spill my blood like a
tapped well like a
draining sky like a
dead brother like a
granite slab. and if I ever
find that face in the dirt or
wherever it is that face has been
lost -- I will keep raising myself up&
uptofindmyplace.