Curled In Millipede
With tentative fingertips prodding,
They herded the millipede on the linoleum
Lest it vanish in the shag of the hallway,
Child giants with their curiosity,
They discovered vast mathematics
In the segmented line
And a certain constancy of sine waves–
Mute multipedal symphony,
Legs full of trigonometric constancy.
In all this–brushes with the ghosts
Of Descartes, Newton, Fibonacci.
(Oughtn’t I tell them of the golden mean?)
All such associations
Sprung from the play of children
Visited upon a curled-in millipede.
Variables pushed against the silent fortitude
Of equations I couldn’t explain,
Wrapped in the vanishing coefficients
Of something so vaguely Archimedean
I couldn’t recognize its dwindle-down spiral,
And left me alone with Fibonacci–
They to their natural studies
Unwinding somewhere in the front yard‘s grass.
**
Scorpius at the Tree Line in Early Morning
The cold early-morning earth, its crust
In slow flux groans a supplicant’s
Communiqué rising into the night while I amble outside.
Just passing through–
Curious while I ought to sleep,
Stung by curiosity at the clarity
Of Scorpius’ crawl across the void
And so near the longleaf pines
Huddled in shadow across the road:
Southern sky full of its poisoned tail
A meteor streaks, burning out its poison
Against Earth’s atmosphere–a necrotic shriveled mass
Lost in some farmer’s field and soon turned under
Amid clumps and clods, dead beneath another season’s topsoil.
Constellations have tilted
Against the thick palm of dark matter
While other stars yet threaten to burn
With their silver fire-touch.
Against eons they have spun in mute disregard
Of names projected on them
In their own patient wanderings.
**
Throat Punch
(I borrowed a pen to write this.)
Forty-two years’ worth of rotten
Stinking angry honest thoughtful stuff
The hell, man?
It’s raw enough to look headlong into
Then askance just to make sure it’s there
Like not wanting to make eye contact with a bum
Who’s spoiling for the panhandling
As he scratches himself
(Drunks women bums girls writing
Homelessness sex bills cats bars)
Something at once journalistic
Something voyeuristic about reading
The old guy and enough to give pause
For some decompression later
Maybe a shower or a Disney flick
Perhaps both
Some dude looked at me reading
What I was reading
(Drunks women bums girls writing
Homelessness sex bills cats bars)
It’s a thick trade paperback,
Thick enough to turn spine-out
For an improvised weapon
Face or throat
(throat, I think)
Guy wanted to say something
Smug-faced prick–could see it in his
Beads-in-dough eyes
I had already dealt with being throat-punched
Moments earlier by the pleasures of the damned
He walked away
And I, smug-faced myself,
Read on
**
Heisenberg in the Afternoon
Heavy heat blankets the afternoon.
Anvil thunderheads evolve
Toward festering purple grotesqueries–
Sparks and growls from a southerly storm-forge.
Insects fall quiet amid the first ripe drops
While cliques of dragonflies carve erratic orbitals
In luxuriant, suffocating humidity.
So impromptu,
This demonstration on quantum mechanics,
Waltzing in mute uncertainty.
