The Man Who Attracts Bullets - David Ignatow

[Larry Robinson]

The Man Who Attracts Bullets
 
I’m being shot at in the street.
So far, I have escaped being hit,
feeling the bullets zip by.
I keep walking straight ahead,
making sure not to veer from course
nor duck nor swerve, in case this shooting
is intended simply to scare.
 
How about this, even seated
in my favorite chair at home
under a lamp with a paper, I feel
the bullets flying by?  I sit very still
and imagine what is meant
is a warning to go right on
as I have been going, in a perfectly normal,
calm way.
 
I have been nicked from time to time
when I have made a wrong move, awkwardly
shifting my feet to cross a mud puddle
or straightening my clothes in the wind.
I’d feel a sting in the arm or ear
and I’d know.  When I go to bed
I make sure my head is lying
in the right position for sleep.
I have been shot at in my sleep too,
tossing in a dream. In the morning
I sit up with a splitting headache
or an aching back.
 
The moral, it seems, is to do what you must
and you will be buried at a ripe age,
blessing your wounds.
      
	- David Ignatow 
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