The Quantumverse
Scaredy-egg
begs the question –
which came first
the chicken or
the cat?
Electric jump back
6.242×1018 coulomb
crazy bitch neurons
firing begging burning
from the frying pan
onto the plate
you yes you honey
gonna cat-scratch eat you
gonna love you right up.
For dVerse Quadrille
Wake up you
chucklehead!
Yeah you! Talking to you!
This is your fire-breathing,
rip-tearing, snort-snorting
coffee speaking!
It’s Caffeine Thursday
and while there are no nuts
in Chock Full O’ Nuts,
if you laugh
it out your nose
you will miss
your bus.
An alternate, coffee-inspired submission for dVerse Quadrille
Today will you penance
the ordinary,
make pilgrimage of necessity
from your book of days –
Sulfur Monday – you are
but tinder for the world
Matchfire Tuesday – conflagration
shadows your every step
Ash Wednesday – and to dust
you shall return
For these are you lent
For dVerse Quadrille
Lest we forget
Plough Monday
is first
after Epiphany
and I’ll let that mean
whatever you want,
but now you come to me
a Mummer
a
Guiser,
Pace-egger, Souler,
Tipteerer, Wrenboy,
Galoshin
and
mumbling, murmuring, muttering
your lines, you play,
mouthing seeds
of revelation.
*Mummer’s plays were amateur skits in England, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, Ireland etc. , and were sometimes staged on Plough Monday (also Christmas & Easter), often on the streets or in pubs.
That unbeknownst to all,
slumber requires
a leap dream –
like a leap year –
an extra turn or toss
of night
to true up
the gaps in our days,
alms, for shadows
gone begging.
And explains, so, finally,
never feeling quite
caught up
to ourselves.
For dVerse Quadrille #47
1962. Virgil, our
bantamweight
Milkman
Threw bottles and
Cigarette smoke
Through the wall
Like punches.
Small for a boxer
But not for a poet –
His crunch and clench
Of bone, time, wives, milk, eggs –
tattoos and fists
Swinging fame
From Troy, NY
To Rome.
There is a hole
In the bucket of hope
And we laughed and sang
As our luck ran out
The night unable to hold
When the rain you heard
Was not the rain you know
Time’s last few drops
In the patter of dust
“There is a human wildness held beneath the skin that finds all barriers brutishly unbearable”
– Jim Harrison (Day Four – 28 Days of Unreason)
She collects whispers from the menagerie,
Breathes the restless prowling
Back to me.
Who is this silkwife – spinning threads of touch
From the tangled desire
of moths?
My arms swing her up in their trawl –
She knows catch and release,
The leap of endolphins.
I want to see your
Habanero eyes
Señorita,
That crazy hot
Look
Like wild peppers,
Like no way José,
Like you’re too hot
To handle,
That say: “If you can’t take
The heat mister mister mister
Then get the hell
Out
Of
My
Kitchen”
My love, your fierce will
Is tempered steel –
Storm forged
From prevailing winds,
The strength of maelstroms
That beat the sky
Back upon the sea,
Anvil’d sparks and strikes
Of lightning –
Watermarked layers
What look soft as damask
But gives you
The sharpest edge
qbit 