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.
