Kool-Aid by Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois

My blood turned to water
and my body into a glass pitcher

Someone came and sprinkled granules
and the water turned grapey

People came and drank of me
and died in agonizing pain
Their bodies littered the ground

2.
Tanks pushed their mighty weight down the tarmac
North Koreans goose-stepped
Lily pad blooms in ponds kept silent

The Kool-Aid turned back into blood
I had no control of these metamorphoses
The pitcher turned back into flesh and bone

I was the same as I had always been
but now I was leaner, more muscular
a finely conditioned athlete
if a little anemic
I took care of that with iron capsules

I went through the North Korean town punching people
throwing them against brick walls
but that became boring

I became a pacifist
a humanist
a Unitarian-Universalist

I believed that God was One
and loves everybody
and would not punish me for transgressions,
would not torment me
in Hell

I nostalgically remember the days
when my blood was water
then Kool-Aid

and I lived in a glass pitcher
like a turtle inhabiting his shell

*****

Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois has had over twelve-hundred of his poems and fictions appear in literary magazines in the U.S. and abroad, including BEAKFUL. He has been nominated for numerous prizes.  His novel, Two-Headed Dog, based on his work as a clinical psychologist in a state hospital, is available for Kindle and Nook, or as a print edition. To see more of his work, google Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois. He lives in Denver.