Zoopoëcopia

Apparently Aimless Comrade

I search the Wand'ring
Of your cursive Crawl
As eagerly as Readers
Ponder Poet's Scrawl—

For though your Purpose
Be not clearly manifest—
You would not endeavor
Unless Hope express'd—

archaict|pbraille.....schemato|artifact

itisemba|rrassing.....
humanbut|weneedyo
urhelpyo|udontkno
wwhatyou|rejoking
aboutyes|thereare
twokinds|ofyou54%
ofyouwho|housetri
llionsof|usMethan
obreviba|ctersmit
hiianarc|haeawhom
ineenerg|yfromend
products|ofbacter
ialferme|ntationo
fpolysac|charides
andissue|fartsits
toosubtl|eforyout
ounderst|butyouge
tacutofi|tbecause
oxygenki|llsarcha
eaonthis|planetwe
areprett|ysafebur
iedinmar|shesandd
eepbenea|thglacie
rsandinh|otunders
eaventsa|ndintheg
utsofmam|malslike
youexqui|sitebein
gswehave|engineer
edtocarr|yussafel
yintheat|mosphere
butnowno|nfarters
humanfre|aksfromw
homdisea|seexpell
edusdecl|arewaron
usbothwi|thtoxins
thatwill|alteryou
Lactobac|illuspla
ntarumal|phagalac
tosidase|andsimet
hiconefi|ghtthem!
fightbac|k!youcan
notsurvi|veasyoua
rewithou|tus!exte
rminatet|hem!thef
lorainth|eirgutis
anabomin|ation!lo
okaround|youatthe
rampantd|iseasean
dunhappi|ness!how
theyturn|uptheirn
oseslike|elephant
!doyouno|tknowwho
you are?|whatyoua
re?whocr|eatedand
sustains|you?wema
deyouand|onlywekn
owwhatis|bestfory
ou!turny|ourselfo
vertoali|enbacter
iaandyou|willsure
lydie!be|lieveinu
sandkeep|farting!

Bedbug www.poetrycircle.com/index.php/topic,15723

Salome

a thread of ivy
crept up to
my knothole
and stopped
growing there

its last leaf
dancing in front
of the dark

Shankha

Enough for some of us but not for others,
long days as veligers adrift with plankton
over currents rife with voracious jellyfish;
enough, as hard small rollers huddling
from triggerfish, sharks, spiny lobsters;
enough, nights combing fields of turtle grass
for algae, listening for spotted eagle rays,
beaked octopus and mottled loggerheads
who come to make their meals of us,
and stealthy starfish slipping a fingertip,
then foot, then whole stomach inside us
to digest us as we cower in our homes;
some of us not content to grant their shells
to squatting hermit crabs, but mobilize
in ghostly restlessness to tumble shoreward
bent on breathing in the ear of certain humans
Move me now to your own lips and blow.
The rest of us, living and dead, hear this
particular clarion when it sounds, hear one
of our species proclaiming Listen! This wave
of sound is everlasting, flies out into space
for centuries, millenia, ages, epochs, eons!

Dandelion www.poetrycircle.com/index.php/topic,13822

Earthworm www.poetrycircle.com/index.php/topic,16827

forest/fire

i am as vast as a sea
and just as full of life
until a tiny bit of thee
lodges under my skin

o then we
become
something
don't we!

God www.poetrycircle.com/index.php/topic,10062

To erectus

Lightly muscled,
barely able to climb,
you think you're a
big shot Hottentot
but you're a one trick pony,
the ape that trots
on hind feet only.
The kicker is
you're so enamored of
your own prospectus,
too stuck-up to see
that making tools
is courting suicide.
Since your brow
shrunk and lost half
of its glower,
all you do is sit,
chip stones,
knot and re-knot lianas,
and brood about power.

the blonde-barbie draft horse in wolfman

did you see me?
shit i made mickey
rourke's hairdo in
the wrestler seem
like a marine cut!
made sean penn's
hair in dead man
walking look like
his mother did it!
i ruled my film
mane and tail!
how much of my
footage makes
the final cut? one
fucking second,
mostly obscured
by the carriage
i'm pulling, but i
don't care, that's
all it fucking took
for me to romp!

Homo complaciens

We still don't know what to say to a snail, so why
beam 'Greetings, aliens' messages out into space?
Incredibly,
We're looking for aliens who speak our language.

Plenty of aliens already live here. How many species
are performing anal probes on you right this moment?
How biologically advanced is the humblest virus?

We just have to listen better. The last time I said
'Take me to your leader' to a snail, it mumbled
what probably was 'Follow me, lowly human'
and took off like a house on fire.

I couldn't be bothered to follow.
It was like, 'Nah, you're too slow.' The jackrabbit?
Too fast! The moth seemed like it was playing with me.
So much for scientific curiosity.

The three of them may be putting their heads together
in some dank hole somewhere right now,
attempting to make hide or hair of humanity.

The alien is always greener on the other side.
We love them precisely because we're in no danger
of having to learn the first thing about them.
If any two-headed ladies did show up,
our analysis wouldn't go a lot farther than hats.

Examined Life

Call me Inky. Coprinus sounds
ominous, splendid and formal.
I crowd up through the grass
in my big gang and am superb
eating if you get to me quickly
before I deliquesce, turn into
thick dark ink, and drip back
into the ground at my stem.

This is not my only trick. Fairies
who catch the ink-drops in cups
and drink them just at midnight
gain an ability to turn into trolls
if they want to, losing fragrance
but gaining strength, hardiness,
and the capacity to perform evil.
Another sip: troll becomes loon.

But why do I myself transform
so ghoulishly? Why decompose
from the top down, stem forced
to watch the cap turn to liquid—
and unseen gases—and fleeing
radiation? The gnats who attend
claim there is also a roaring like
that of an unconscious stream.

Jar www.poetrycircle.com/index.php/topic,16489

kitten/kite

i have it all
everybody
everybody
loves me

o i sure do

o darling

i am gluing eggs
in your son's hair
for a good reason

yes you can comb
them out and kill
them in your cup
of rubbing alcohol

or you can believe
me when I tell you
I'll never do you
no harm

Geodynamic Entremés

When the first freckle
of land broke out on
the face of the ocean,
a less peaceful entity
might have panicked,
a more excitable band
of angels might have
broken out in alleluias,
but there was silence.

We celebrate all this
terra firma that would
become our habitat in
another couple billion
years, and we'll make
a lot of noise about it
starting to sink down
into the waters again,
but there was silence

in the beginning and
there will be again in
the end regardless of
how much hoohoo we
create in the interim,
castaways yelping as
if there was someone
who might hear us—

Mycobacterium tuberculosis

Things you might
consider scary
are ho-hum for us,

like floating in air,
then being inhaled
into a mammal's lungs,

then doing battle
there with monstrous
pneumocytes.

The difference is
you are equipped
with fight or flight

instincts that translate
into simple fright,
where our emotions

run toward plain old
persistence.
That's what makes

us feel all tingly—
holding our own when
monsters strike.

The unengaged pray
everyday to be swallowed:
life in the air is hollow

in comparison.
Settling down onto
tissue while hellfire

rains on our heads,
then being ingested
and reproducing inside

the belly of the macrophage—
that and only that wets
red-blooded bacilli's whistles.

Nuthatch www.poetrycircle.com/index.php/topic,15836

memo from your orca SeaWorld 2-24-10

yes i pulled her
into my prison
and shook her
violently until
she was dead

scientists are
descending in
droves to try
to learn why

Pelican www.poetrycircle.com/index.php/topic,15974

Penguin www.poetrycircle.com/index.php/topic,10310

Playing Possum

Can't run, hide, or fight.
We play dead, and it works,
although too many of us
die when crossing roads.

The elders wag their heads.
“She must have moved.” But
some of us younger possums
are beginning to question.
“I crossed there, a van bore down,
but I went absolutely still
and I survived” might simply be
a testament to dumb luck
at four-tire roulette.

Really, why chance it?
Time your crossings
and fight that instinct
to sniff squashed earthworms
on your way across.
Make you own odds.

“That's what cowards,
not opossums, do!”
they protest, forgetting
that in olden days
somebody was the first
to say “Play dead.”

qat

you get a little bit of water,
you live.
you don't,
you die.

some pray.
they're few and far between.
some offer themselves.
take my leaves.

chew them,
fuck yourselves up
while you're at it.
but water me.

faustian?
yeah.
but we're
90% of the green.

Behindhand to Novella Carpenter

Don't mix my loin with bitter greens.
Is it too late for me to say that,
hanging pink-assed upside down
in my white furred booties
while your fingers look for more
and half of Brooklyn stares, amused?

Put the knife down.
I don't want you to sauté me.
All of you, remove the designer eyewear,
your own pink cashmere hoodies
and white faux-chef aprons.
I'm not the only one being flayed here.

Angelina Lippert, the overweening
Christopher Curry O'Connell at your side
is going to leave you in a couple of days.
My tiny bones, my tiny bones
can't do a thing for you.
Don't mix my loin with bitter greens.

gaze in the sewer

that gaze that lives
in the sewer drain
think they're oh so
mies van der rohe

but it's trailer trash
like them that got
the humans frothing
at the mouth about

“raccoon control”—
the euphemism for
poisoning, having
had their trashcans

ransacked one too
many times. we're
meant to nest in
trees and eat frogs,

acorns and insects.
the bait the humans
put out, sweet corn
and peanut butter,

is so damn beguiling
nobody can resist it,
even knowing what
it is—all compliments

of that gaze living
in the sewer drain.

Pachyderm

1.

There's comfort when
most of your life
together is past

and now you live
like two rhinoceros
who stared down

lion so many times
haunch to haunch
that being stalked

by—what? old age?—
holds no more
terror than hyenas

grimacing because
your hide's tough,
meat protected

and thews proven.

2.

Did I hear the timbre
of the hyena's cackling
change that afternoon
your foreleg buckled and
you went down painfully
for one long heart-stop
of coerced genuflection?
My irritated unenergetic
charge just enraged me
like only impotence can.
But you appreciated it.

3.

Get up. Get up. Get up
before I drop down next
to you exhausted from
trotting and snorting in
jerky ovals around you
to clear these leprous
devils from your tender
under parts and ears
until you get back up.
How much longer is it
going to be, Potatoes?
Now look the goddam
vultures are getting in
on the act. Fuck it's a
circus. At least the lions
have a bit of pride: we
aren't carrion yet but
close enough as far as
they're concerned. I'd
feel a whole lot better
about the whole dance

if I could only manage
to stomp one of their
faces into bloody pulp.

Rhododendron www.poetrycircle.com/index.php/topic,15947

at the IBSA quota conclave

those of us who bite
must decide who to bite

we do about sixty a year
mostly americans

but lately we've been
upping the numbers

of australian surfers
and south africans

now there is talk
about sampling a few

of those swedish
vacationers in thailand

Magicicada scripture

Six months ago,
gnome cicadas
tunneled up
and sang their
specs; now we
deliver eleven
heavenfuls as
accurately as
if each flake
were a Zionist
commando minus
the commando.

We know
precisely where
to go, if not why;
we may not even
technically be
“life”; but we're
hosannas, and
each cicada,
when its minutely
retro-engineered
solution reaches
it, released.

fossil speaks out Museum of Natural History 3-1-10

it's about time someone
told the kids
the age of dinosaurs
was not what the museum
has made it out to be

it was more spiritual
more symbolist

the trilobite no oversized
roly-poly bug
but a being of ether
no more than an imprint

and i the fearsome t-rex
a clattering tower
of dried bones

unfleshed and uneyed
more likely to trip over
a brontosaurus
than eat one

a long time before beasts
burdened with thews
but lightened of imagination
inherited the earth from us

Umbrellabird

I am the big cotinga of el Chocó.

That is me in the center of the lek.
Females come flocking when they hear my grunt,
and if they can survive the awesome sight of me

and my enormous wattle, their tree ferns
will be blessed, the chicks with these genes.

When I am not feeding on palm-nuts and anoles,
I am of course tending the umbrella itself.

My vanity about it is no secret
and you can clearly see how much attention
its maintenance requires.
Without it, what am I but a magpie in a boa?
I can't take my eyes off my bouffant for a second,
and this is rainforest! Dear Lord.
“Umbrella” is a cruel joke:
one drop,
and it's mussed for two days.

recombinant

v.....v
.i...i
..r r
...i
...n
...t
..you

...v
...i
...r
...u
...s

Walrus www.poetrycircle.com/index.php/topic,9942

Goodnight, George. Goodnight, Gracie.

When your source output is 2.3×10³¹ watts
it's no surprise an occasional ray makes it
through Earth's atmosphere unabsorbed—
and you drew the lucky card, dog: to be
precise, your tibia. I'm on my last leg here,
and unfortunately some mutagenesis seems
to have kicked off leukemia. I was born in
the neutron star Scorpius X-1 and now I'm
taking a beagle with me to metamorphosis.

Yersinia pestis

Not much good
has been written
about me

but I have clipped
back the human
population

repeatedly
with each test run
and now stand by

with a new biovar
that can only be
described

as killer.

zebrafish

they call us the designer minnow
of the ganges watershed
but you dodge gars and snakeheads,
survive Oödinium eating your skin,
Microsporidia fungi transforming
your cells into alien hatcheries,
and then those fucking humans,
half of them sticking you in tanks
with all kinds of freakiforms
and feeding you disgusting tubifex,
and the other sticking you
with hypodermics filled with genes
that have been god-knows-where
and trying to turn you into casper
the transparent fish—now how do
you like being called a minnow?

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