Man is a time-wasting animal;
man is unique, man is
idle in life, careless with food,
dawdling, open-mouthed, at the
top of the peaks,
the top of chains.
Man is a time-wasting animal,
and, perhaps,
the only animal that believes
time can be wasted at all.
Author: Wolf
Born on a farm and never recovered.
are friends forever
do they emerge, wholly-formed of clay
and light, do they
spill sunlight from their mouths and
shed tears more precious than diamonds, do
they know who and how they are, do they
know how much will be lost with them,
how much would be paid for them, do
they rise in the morning and
fall in the evening (we can only suspect),
do they last beyond warranty,
through repair, do they
survive earthquakes, the hurling of stones,
do they stay with us, from town to town
and life to life, do they
remember our faces or
do they end up,
abandoned,
in a crinkle-metal junkyard
with all the rest?
we scare ourselves because it’s fun
driving home my eyes saw
something my brain would not see;
in the darkness, fleshy, swaying,
something,
something that should not be.
driving home my soul sputtered
and spat out on the dash;
who is – what is – where is –
something,
something that should not be.
trial
this is the night of trial and terror
the night that must be survived and
lived well;
a night without faltering,
or a night to be relived
in wake-screaming nightmares,
forever.
when i pass
do not weep for me as i pass
this brain has made ascent to ash
these feet have walked the final hall
and all of me has gone to lull
do not weep for me – who knows,
perhaps something of me still grows
if not here, then somewhere brighter,
lovelier, livelier,
with nights deeper and days lighter,
some place neither far nor near.
and if you weep – i will not hear.
lures
they say all clouds have silver linings,
they’re wrong,
but they say that.
there are fish that live their entire lives in darkness,
monstrous fish,
with heads like the naked steel of tractor engines,
and bodies like the scribblings of children;
and deep in the dark, remote places,
places even mankind cannot ruin,
there are creatures with long, slender lures,
bright-shined and dangling
in front of thin, sharp, teeth.
And certainly some would approach that silver light,
bright and pure,
with no regard for the endless hunger
that supplies it.
malignant motion
and here they are, dozens, hundreds,
thousands of malignant motions,
every day repeating, every day
spreading through the population;
these are the numbers we see too often,
the nonsense riddles,
the lack of reason for a
taut bowstring.
they’re spreading now, now,
faster than ever, until
every ounce of flesh,
every splinter of bone,
is working towards some
purposeless purpose.
the fungibility of outrage
Our fuses have been pruned and shaped
as bonsai branches, grown
short, unnaturally numerous; prodded
with terrifying constancy.
This world produces only matchsticks,
waiting to catch and burn
until you sport another cinder;
everything is aimed at you, or me,
for no purpose but to enrage;
does it matter what you’re enraged about?
or is this rage a seething wave,
separated only by the momentary shape,
then settling, homogeneous,
slaked back by the sea?
utopian ideal
a utopia is a place
where everyone is freely offered
the option
to kill themselves
and nobody does
field dress
some sounds stay with you,
like the first mention of love,
and unfortunately,
this is one of them –
this sonata of butchery,
the first cut from neck-to-tail,
the hiss of warm innards
round or long or lumpy
spilling onto the snow, steaming,
and the scrape of a buck-knife,
along the hollow of a carcass, the
scratch in the ribcage,
the pooling of blood
and evil odor
where a heart was racing and
a stomach was churning,
only moments ago.
some sounds stay with you,
like the first mention of love,
and some are left behind,
steaming,
staining the snow.
