Sunday, November 29, 2020

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


Saturday, November 14, 2020

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


________________

Wednesday, November 11, 2020

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


Tuesday, November 10, 2020

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


Sunday, November 8, 2020

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


Wednesday, November 4, 2020

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

Sunday, November 1, 2020

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


__________________