Non-Intervention

inside the rib-white carcass

the wasps made their paper nest

you hit it, full swing

with your angry bamboo 

walking stick, we had 

no business

raising a goat this far out 

in the wilderness, I am sure 

it was a lion

who dragged 

her here

I confess

I didn’t know 

a goat could scream

so human-like, articulate even

but it makes sense when you 

see a half-man half-goat 

carved in ancient bowls 

their voices empty, wistful

hooves planted and silent  

I am sorry 

I heard it all go down

and did nothing, actually

that’s not entirely true

while you slept 

through the tumult

I turned 

the radio louder

to drown out the myth

of man and land 

and fed

your dreams some 

useless chatter

Deciphered from the 3rd Dynasty

in a fragment of clay behind a crosshatch of wedges the enshrined fingerprint         and befuddlement                 of an insolent boy 

who rolled his 

stone-bored eyes

at a carefully prepared

explanation of the miraculous

subtraction by addition, if you can 

read it, you will know the boy

couldn’t give two shits 

about columns and digits

not when there are sleeping owls

to slap from the trees, knee-high fields 

of thorny weeds to stomp in bare feet 

so many wings

to pull from the bees 

this morning 

in an underfunded cuneiform 

lab, some poor sap stirs

her cold coffee with hermeneutics

she is going to crack

this tablet, she is just seconds

away and on the verge 

of the last, great 

human translation: 

when will we, like, ever need

to know this, you know, like

in real life

________________

Writers' Pantry 46: Playing Catch Up

dVerse Open Link Night

Cryptozoology

  

the sleepy keane eyes

of a purple donkey tattoo wink

when she flexes her bicep, she turns 

the pages of a book 

I can’t pin the tail on: Saddling 

Agrippa’s Haunches, the genre

all muddled—soft historical harlequin 

cookbook where luscious hair awash in dusk

is always the main ingredient—gritty true crime

exposition on Renaissance husbandry

a treatise for dummies 

on the asinity of snorkelers milking 

mucus from sea snails for Tyrian dyes 

that don’t bleed—step-by-step 

make-up tutorial for royals, their best

practices for blending the purple

pond of bruises and welts of feudal

serfs who don’t talk good—a bestiary

of blessed creatures rocking amethyst

nipples who ferry lost heroes to 

hypothetical sidewalk cafes 

where Circe stirs a lavender brew 

she lets the heroes thirst

for unreadable books, allows them 

to make asses of themselves

_________________________

Delightful Donkey, by Gina Morley

Weekly Scribblings #45: Artistic Interpretation

Marvelous

on hikes, I look down

pathologically eyeing 

whatever the dirt offers

elk tracks, deer scat 

bountiful in backwood

dinner country 

large, whole 

raven wings

disengaged

 

a cupped-hand basket 

of buckhorn cholla spines

 

the purple lips of the pouting

crescent milkvetch, a pile 

of orange bones, a rock

rolled to reveal a Prince 

Albert tobacco tin—an impish

prank of preservation

further down the floodplain

there is a Whirlpool microwave

dangling from a cottonwood

I won’t see it, I look down

I have only heard of such marvels

______________________

dVerse: Poetry as witness

Forgotten Thoughts of the Lost Socks

we hide until the

seeking collapses 

like the fading 

wave of a whistle 

losing steam, no finders

no keepers, no search parties

or weepers, no lamppost

posters, we are through

we are not thunder-prodded dogs 

or heirloom jewels, just thrown 

webs of bare threads

the world out there losing 

proteins and hair, working on

without us, we got chloroplasts

rubbed in, stitches giving up 

and letting go, and so many holes

escape hatches for toes 

rambling woods, thorn

snagged and foot rubbed raw

well heeled, woolen tube 

and cotton wall exposed 

to mud spit puddle 

adventurous that one time in

catshit bubblegum sandbox

and yet, we don’t 

just disappear, we bug out

nesting in dryer sheets and lint

housing lifetimes of spiders, moths 

and mice, we contemplate whatever

became of our inseparable mates

Tasmanian Devil Ascending and Still

 

be still myself

as the body

flails, jerks

and disjoints

tendon limb and muscle

in moving division 

of self and intent

be still myself

and guard the heart

contemplate the tropical 

sapwood, the form 

of carbon, the deep breath 

be still myself, swirling muds

the landscape, the colors

of everyone 

disintegrate into black

the fine dark lines

get wrecked, at this speed

friends and adversaries

merge into an artless blur

be still myself, reach 

into the healing well of the hurricane

eyewall inside, settle into 

the seven points posture

of Variocana bathed 

in Bougainvillea Glabra 

ascend myself

above the cloud of debris, god once used

a pillar of cloud to lead 

the people without cessation 

allow myself

to be the constellation of hands and dusty feet

extended above the animated havoc

of howling fang and raised fur

be still and ascended myself

not sowing fear, but cleansing

the land of fear, teaching others

to ride the open eye, showing them 

the path, how to taste thistles 

along the exodus and why

_____________________________

Weekly Scribblings #44: Eye of the Hurricane

Entrance

the guts 

are full 

of switchbacks,

stoppages, rumble strips 

and we call it love 

it’s the gut feeling, the tenderness 

of a gold tapeworm eating itself 

pressing our faces 

against the shower glass

the water pools 

on the floor, the room 

is fresh with roses, blooms 

of infection erupt 

where we touch 

our laces are loose, our heels

hardened, here we are

two tempestuous butterflies 

throwing our belts 

against the door, itching 

like an entrance wound reopened

the reddened passion has  

swelled for sixteen brutal years

we are bruised sore, bumbling 

for an exit wound

__________________

  (Nov. 1)