Category: Poetry

Traipsing across the southern valley,
it’s time for a bluejay to fly by
and disrupt my peaceful mind–a mind
which has come to the conclusion
that separatists deserve a fair shake
before all is lost from their campaigns
to end global warming, child poverty
and the invasive spread of religion.

Without so much as a crow streaking by,
my thoughts begin to replicate
the telephone booth from The Birds,
encasing me right where I stand
and throwing my spirit aloft to the domain
of our tiny winged dinosaur friends,
who appear to be fighting off extinction
from all angles, invisible–save the insect
populations they’ve culled and the plants
growing from seeds they’ve passed.

Imagine as a poet
that you must
lose poetry
for the rest of your life
unconditionally,
may not read,
write
or speak it.

You would need
to rely
on body language,
as any sentence
uttered aloud
is rendered
unique
purely because
it has happened
at a time
after any other
we can recall
at the moment.

Such a task
would wear
on the soul,
then one day
you’d suddenly
start stripping
anger from a lemur
found dawdling
near headquarters
who now really wants
nothing more
than to go home,
as all the anger
has been removed,
exorcised, perhaps.

I’m not too troubled
by the humanitarian implications
present in such an occurrence.
I’m more concerned with
how all these ham sandwiches–
half with mustard, half with mayo–
got here in the first place.
Falling from a passing hot air balloon
would be the most plausible explanation,
an airborne picnic that got
too heavy to stay aloft otherwise.

Biff and Buffy Picnicmaker
would have plenty left to snack on anyway
if such a scenario were true.
There would still be enough
hard-boiled eggs, potato salad,
caviar and toast points
to last them through the sunset,
as they’re not big eaters anyway.
They had a sizable breakfast
before taking to the sky,
and the only thing they really
can’t go without would be their urn
of coffee, painstakingly brewed
the day before yet still steaming–
just the way they like it.

Persevering out there
is a scrambled mess
of tofu dog segments,
melted in extreme circumstances
and wholly unappetizing.
As people hurry around
to get out of the heat,
they unknowingly tread
on the unfortunate food.
Nobody seems to notice
this sequence of events unfold
in the clattering clambering,
but nothing can be done
to save this pile of mush
from total disintegration.
What was once a protein-packed
example of culinary hubris
has become a parade of people
spreading a fine paste
across the neighborhood–
one step at a time.

A cluster of tiny ribbons
handles itself gracefully
when asked by its eccentric owner
to dominate a meaningless conversation.
It masks any giddiness
while haranguing its close associates–
teeter totter otters, rubber party peanuts
and spackled bird houses, to name a few.
This collective of tiny ribbons
has been given the gift of gab,
an ability not commonly associated
with inanimate objects. As it riffs
about the state of the world economy,
it receives no response. What was meant
to be an exchange of language
has become a one-sided affair,
domination by default. This occasion
marks the first and last time
that this grouping will ever speak;
it slowly begins to disband,
shedding ribbons two and three
at a time until just one remains,
happy to sink back into anonymity.
The owner attempts to form a new bundle,
but playing God won’t work this time.

Handier than a set of dull steak knives
and more buoyant than the Duke of Edinburgh,
this here dog in a box is a celebration
of festive times past. Since the dawn
of our current set of circumstances,
nothing has refreshed one’s sense of dignity
more than the knowledge of a particular
string of extraterrestrial occurrences
up over by Lake Uponamawoc–if they’re
to be believed. The results of these
alien encounters are apparent: dogs-in-boxes
are popping up all across the tri-county area,
the calling cards of our benevolent overlords
from the other end of the galaxy. Nobody
knows when this started, but spiritual channelers
have often said this practice predates
the bronze age by a good margin. Our species
may have first learned of both dogs and boxes
through this bizarre ritual, utterly changing
our impressions of storage and animal friendship.

Bustling wind whistles briskly through trees, tall grasses and urban corridors more often than any other location on Earth, at least for the time being. Tomorrow may tell a different story, bringing gusts to sand dunes and mountain summits, but the objective is always the same no matter where the brunt of nature’s force takes place: gather together enough energy to knock a 200-pound man off his feet with ease and judge his reaction as impartially as possible. Usually the man will exaggerate how much of an impact the wind made, even if there’s nobody around. He’ll throw up his arms nine times out of ten and yell, “Wowee, sure as hell caught me by surprise!” Again, this transpires more often than not even if nobody else is within earshot; the typical male human is steeped in macho tradition, concerned more with saving face than ensuring immediate bodily safety.