Tug Dumbly - Stick Insect Calls it Quits

Stick Insect Calls it Quits

She slows like a digging machine  

tucking its head,     

closing, cooling, ticking.

Imagine a last tiny hiss

of released air

from a pneumatic system,

and then she stops.

A dancer wound down

in the field of her future –

a scatter of eggs,

like marijuana seeds,

the pods she squeezed

from the pipette of her body

before climbing from the leaves

to her graceful extinction.

A good end, you could say.

Such a lesson in dying

the way she eased

to the floor of the cage

to lay limbs in a symmetry

of obeisance to some hereafter.  

You might almost say

in dying she prayed.

Goodnight, sweet Queenie …

Sentimental sop, of course. Who’s

to say you went uncomplaining,

and not silently screaming

at the unjust theft?  

But sentimental crimes

might be all we have left, 

the last sanctuary to answer

a planet of practical butchery   

a wet imagination

the last green pocket                       

from they who can’t translate,

with the wist of a child,        

the meaning of creatures

from the hieroglyphs of nature,   

who can’t read the braille dog

on an old woman’s knee.  

+

This little death caps a day  

of children striking against 

the death sweat of the world,

their placards bumped

from the front page

by a mosque sprayed

with a meme of blood

streamed live, in a celebrity seeker’s

snuff reel of selfie hate.               

This is where Fame leads, Andy.  

Fifteen minute adds up 

to a score of fifty-nil, and a

Nazi cockring of barracking mates.  

Narcissism meets gadgetry

to choreograph a killing

with the DIY pride

of a bloke’s well-oiled barbeque.

Such a good haul,

and they all wanna know,             

as blood’s mopped from the floor,

how he stalked his prey, what gear did he use?   

Mixed media murder  

the pop art outrage of the time.

Species extinction starts

with one small step,

one triumph of the ill,

one blockbuster crime

against all that patient,

inarticulate suffering,

trapped in a prayer bubble,         l

quiet as a caterpillar’s tread. 

Why wait on a spirit level

when you can be the killer wasp   

shooting eggs into the soft meat

of a creature’s head?

+

Beneath the fossil fed chirr

of air conditioners and tinnitus

of insects in innocent grass  

so much holocaust underlay,         

earth’s a dirty carpet of the stuff,

a filo pastry of sodden flesh.   

Drinky drinky, old blood sponge,

your thirst won’t brook delay.   

The only the challenge remaining

a great refusal 

to try and master the world.

The last solution

for the solution plagued

absolution from being right.                          

Skim a smooth stone

across the pond of the mind

till it sinks from sight  

drop a pebble in the well of an eye

and see the pupil spread, pool and bloom

to a Venn field of Iris wild.  

You show me yours,

I’ll show you mine.

Now read that sentience back to me

and let us have what gods we will,

what clinging insect creeds,

what floating stone elephants of faith,

launched like kites  

from the mountains of the mind,

to lift us aloft,

then call us home

like a child at tea time.