Category: Poetry

Honey Badger

Broken monkey bridges,
a discarded flute case, a
squeaky Gatorade bottle.

Screeching metal moans irreverence
as a young fiction author stands,
speaks with a tremble, microphone necessary.
Excellent resonance would facilitate
unamplified words, but this place clanks around
and sops up sounds in piles of waves.

People viewing the reading turn their heads
towards the sound, the dominant ear, often right.
Those who need the benefit of a loudspeaker
scrunch foreheads in ill comprehension,
plot holes gaping more by the minute.

“The honey badger plunged its muzzle into the beehive
and deployed its tongue, perfectly suited for this task.
A lucky creature, this badger is immune to bee stings,
which makes its job a climb in the park.
Aaron watched all of this and envied the shrewd creature
for its daredevilry. ‘Cynthia gave my ring back,
what the hell? What’d I do, seriously?’ His monologue
was outside of anyone’s earshot, and he immediately
questioned his sanity.”

The audience heard, at best, half of this, furrowing
brows in obvious consternation, magnified by feedback
from both the cheap microphone and industrial noise.

Make It

Synthesis breeds more synthesis,
but requires an initial push.
Rolling creativity into production–
a steam engine warming up
until the wheels glide due
to previous spins and more energy
would be spent to stop it
than keep it going–production.

Centenarian

A hundred year-old tree trunk
stands fast like cement,
rigidly prepared
for encounters which may happen
once in a hundred years,
its existence dedicated
to braving probability
and boring its roots
through porous earth
wide as its fragile canopy
and deep as its constitution allows.

The odds of lifting
this tree by the roots
are now lower than ever
thanks to its raison d’ĂȘtre–
feeding the loam
with its shedded brown fingers,
giving Mother Nature
another winter’s worth of arguments
with Father Time regarding the necessity
of arbitrary destruction
for the greater good.

Cosmic Debris

Poetry comes
from the notion of explaining
why things happen,
whether or not they base themselves
in reality.

Often times,
these things happen due to human intervention,
but some,
less deterministic and headstrong,
detangle the web of cosmic perception
and show what happens
as it happens
and for the purpose of its happenstance,
regardless of human input.

Leaves

Shedded leaves scuffle
across a sunlit parking lot,
their bellies scratching
like rain pattering
the shelly sand
on the Atlantic shoreline.

Hot Dog Fishing

Every bear has a day of monopoly as it hunts salmon, thinking: “well, I don’t think I could do anything wrong during this fishing trip. Hey Larry, check out this one-hander!”

The salmon in the stream know they’re approaching a creature who’s in the zone, and most of them still try to escape its clutches, not figuring the percentage chance that they have of getting away is actually quite high (especially since this particular bear fills up on five salmon, where most other adults like six or even seven).

Larry watches this streaky bear attempt a one-handed catch of a leaping salmon, and he knows such things rarely happen unless the fisher were to impale said fish on its claws, and most salmon are substantial enough to simply bounce off and swim away, or at the very worst lose a few scales and become a laughingstock.

The salmon smacks our hero square in the pad of his paw, only to see another paw close in around its head, securing the catch.

“Hey Doorman, you said one-hander, not two-hander!”

“Dude, I don’t have thumbs, and I deadened the fish on my paw before getting the second one in there. You’re just jealous of my skills.”

Larry is a bit jealous of Doorman, but his male instinct won’t let him admit it.

Words of Inspiration

I only hope I can impart
some small change to society,

just as a urine stain,
no matter how minute,

has the power to completely alter
a loveseat’s legacy.