Arthropods

There is a spider—
deep in the recess
of a bolt.

(The ants become
cryptic with eggs)

Beneath the globe—
of a streetlight
reflects a rather

familiar skeleton
on the tractor.

At dinner
my arms are still—
swollen from the bee sting.

(I can’t bury the fork)

Ceremony

I just got backhanded
Straight out the
altocumulus.
My nimbus is
Stratified,
My concentration
Creeps like poison ivy.

Into the sub-ethereal
Pines I find myself
Lined with hides.
Branches spiral
Into the damp
Cauldron of needles.


Segmented and knotty
With claw-like
Extensions,
I carve my path
To the river—

(((Ceremonial organs)))

Chthonic winds drone!

The Petting Zoo Expression

The sun extracts my spinal
fluid with the precision
of an all-in-one
camping spork.

Soon, I will shed
my turtle-box
and anthropomorphize
my ((sit dog)) and ((shake)).

No longer hide under sheets
or anticipate a chocolate
malt. (The neighborhood
eye-bangs giant telescopes).

I will begin to reinstate
my boyish bad temper
with the gaze of a
petting zookeeper.

I will admit
that I can no longer
keep my hands off
of your bicycle.

My only big-kid toy
was a hand-me-down
rusted-old-Schwinn.

I blew the tires off on the first date.

Coyotes

I never really go anywhere
on the tractor—

I am only passing through.

I often pass along
the banks of the Saint Joe
and look out onto the river—

Birds spiral into the clouds
where the water cuts the sky.

I pass by the trail
where the deer cross—

(I hear that coyotes travel
These paths as well)

Perhaps I’ve never known them
in the way that the people
here have never really known me.

They never really see me
like the coyote passing through.

Branches

*
You know that book by your bed?
The one you picked up again recently?
I have that book too.
I love it, but this time
It’s just not the same.
I get about 15 to 20 pages in
and lay it back down.

*
Morning comes
like the whirlwind of youth
and branches begin to fall
like the pages of that book
and I carry those pages away
down the road
where the deer cross
and I lay them back down.

*
And so we wade in the pages
waiting among the branches
for a new day
…a new book.
One that we can
pick up again
and hold up to the sun
and never lay it down.

Dog

Everything makes
sense when I am
petting God’s dog.

The solar eyes of
the beast are illuminating
my electric landscape.

All intricacies are
cosmically ordered,

so the swap land
is froggy with
mosses and ferns.

The animals are
pushing the fence
of progress; pushing

until the wires snap
and the stagnant water
flows into the river.

Dog. Dog, Dog;
I love this adventure.

Dog,

Let’s go fishing.

Dog,

Let’s climb a mountain.

Dog,

The valley.

Dog,

The village.

Dog,

Let’s build a castle on the outskirts, Dog.

Dog,

you’re my dog forever Dog.

I love you.

The Tapping

It is he who walks beyond the emotional cycle

with binary-glyphics and biorhythmic stasis.

For public interest, becomes a graph of physical

health and average habits. When on the heath

with bay steeds, spent critical days tapping hooves.

But as the horses die from lack of the right beating

the tapping becomes the sound of rows of roofing

peeling back to reveal TVs slowly tugging the tennis ball

eyes, just slow enough and with the right amount of

pressure on the optic nerve; the iconic pain-isolating

threshold that awkwardly soothes the strangling of brain

stems and leaves two lips half puckered for the electron beam.