Wednesday, January 29, 2025

The Nose

silent about face, it alone 
can cause humming hair
to stand, back when hair

fought scale and fin


when summer drenched

sweat, the body beat

the rain to the punch


reptilian, hissing

straight to the brain

as if it were the surviving crone

snoring cantos of our names


without use of spine or nervous 

system, this means maggots 

bathed in putrid meat

the predators draw near


this probe can grab smoke

or decay, remove it, sure

leave discernment to the crow 


in verse of feathered caw

unhallucinatable, it knows 

the olfactory assumptions 


once a caravan, once a sum

savior while eyes struggled 

for awareness in deep caves


there, tadpole, the sea 

and scent of salty cream

so thick you taste it



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dVerse: The optician's words (I think I used them all, or at least variations of :)

1 comment:

  1. A striking and ambitious poem that hit the mark! I can’t remember ever reading a poem about a nose, and you’ve given me one that made me sit up! I love the thought of the body beating the rain to the punch and the lines:
    ‘reptilian, hissing
    straight to the brain
    as if it were the surviving crone
    snoring cantos of our names’
    and
    ‘this probe can grab smoke
    or decay, remove it, sure
    leave discernment to the crow
    in verse of feathered caw’.

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