Kissing the blackened eyes of winter,
we will find the sun for you, our sister
though the road be cold and night so dark.
She lay without her sultry lover,
snow her whitened shroud and cover,
but on high we know he comes--hark!
His shadow looming in the gloaming,
faithful still and not for roaming,
the bridegroom sheds his winter pall.
The stone will move that found him missing
her cold-numbed lips he will be kissing,
and in their reunion rejoicing--all!
(After the manner of Aurelia St. John.)
Entomb me with your burying gaze,
your mudslinging ways,
these claws were meant to dig.
But I will be extremely big
about the pyramid of shit
when you had me in it.
Should being brought low make me small?
Honestly? No, not at all.
A scarab beetle cleans and renews
in the dung and death that ensues
all throughout its constructive life.
And me--I thrive on strife.
Because striving is thriving and tills the soil
that preserves my entire mortal coil.
Go on and criticize me,
you nourish and moisturize me.
And I will come up glowing.
So step back or start knowing.
I dreamt of the ancestors,
my ancestors,
even the ones I didn't know.
I have done that, sometimes.
But it makes me wonder
because it would--
is this good?
Because it feels like they
were welcoming me
to that place that we
eventually see
which right this minute shouldn't be
that close for me.
But when I look at this life
and all its attendant harms
a part of me was ready to
rest in those arms.
But maybe they were just checking in.
Because I'm not ready for checking out.
They are staying with me, though.
No doubt.
What is a bird?
The captive child asked
never having seen the sun,
let alone a creature taking wing
free on the wind,
If a pile of shoes could not
throw you,
nor the device where men
were pressed flat,
the vintage of their arteries
running in grooves on the floor--
let that question haunt you:
"What is a bird?"
And how would you explain
the thousand and one things
he'd never seen in the world,
let alone the things
he had?
You apologize to the open drawer
you gracelessly hip-checked
and it mutely
holds no malice.
We anthropomorphize
haphazardly
with respects to the world
around us--
although we forget to
respect
other people.
Locally observed FTL:
information leaping between synapses
like ingenious fire:
lightning captured in a jar of bone.
Promises are bestowed on this
canopic shell housing
the one organ the ancients
simply threw away.
Mens sana in corpore sano.
Lift with the mind and the muscle,
flexing youth--
tempting fate.
O mens!
O corpore!
The palace of the mind is a house of cards
atop a badly stacked pile
of chips, and every move
is a gamble
The problem of physics defies
debugging, and you can't
fix it with a code
any more than you
can fix mortality
with a gun.
flesh marionettes,
unseen strings;
they jerk smiling
but solemn--
slowly,
ritually.
the endzone twerk
and the graveyard stomp
colliding.
dance for the "cleansing fire".
dance for the plague victims,
dance for the war to be.
dance your
last victory;
but make it seem carefree.
surrender thought and
identity.
emulate the joker
in his house of cards
and let the music
play.
