Body Modding

It starts with teeth, for even the healthiest:
Fillings put in, and “extra” teeth pulled out
Or realigned, the whole jaw moved about,
New faces for the kids of the wealthiest.
Tonsils, appendix, out. The stealthiest
Inject, use pills, every fluid reroute
With tourniquets, with tampons, condoms... flout
Flow, through to adult nappies. Atheist
As Science makes us with creative powers,
We add pumps, implants, radio, wires, chips,
Casually as tattoos, replacement hips;
Graft patchwork skin from humans, pigs, plants, flowers,
Joined in flamboyant Frankensteinish suture,
Racing against decay to cyborg future.

Published online in Snakeskin, January 2018

WHEN KONRAD LORENZ

When Konrad Lorenz studied how small fish

Overcame lethal greedy tendency

By activating new dependency -

Called love - to build a larger fulfilled wish,

He clarified the dynamic sweep and swish

Of conquest across Earth’s wide land and sea

That gave to humans such ascendancy,

Watched warfare grow as in a petri dish.

War against Other creates Family.

The nut of war that no hard mind can crack

If opened would show God Life Blaze Attack,

Drying white hot deaths else left clammily.

So life says Outcompete! Outnumber! Breed!

Build Love of Tribe and State! Expand! Succeed!

Published online: Snakeskin 225, January 2016

JIGSAW HEART

My heart's a jigsaw Eschered with small hearts:

Poets: Donne, Arnold, Hopkins, Eliot, Cole – 

Ancestors: captured, wed while on parole –

Family: formed from wandering in wild parts –

Bits of my heart. A house, view of the sea –

Rain-lilies, poincianas, jasmine scent –

Azaleas, goldfish, owls, field grass rain-bent –

Cafe on loud street – quiet library –

My jigsaw's nearly done, a work of heart!

But where’s that long-lost girl-shaped piece…

Lost, it prevents the whole, prevents my peace…

I circle endlessly for that lost part,

The missing statue for the purposed plinth,

That girl lost in some Escher labyrinth.

Published: The Lyric, USA, January 2016

THE EXHAUSTED MINE

In the hard granite of a human chest

Love’s small explosions blast a cavity.

While pumps and sluices clear ore and debris,

Miners create a cavernous heart divest

Of wealth gone out. There may at times unfold

Sad tales of miners trapped by falling stone,

But life demands the risky work go on:

This treasure chest of granite’s veined with gold

The world demands be brought into the light.

A huge cathedral of the spirit’s left,

Caverns of empty worship, dream-bereft,

The treasures claimed by others as their right.

But flecks of gold still glitter in the gloom,

The heart remembers glories in its tomb.

Published, Anima, UK, No.2, 2016

PORTRAITS

Easy enough, the people in the park,
A subway addict, or some screaming child:
Knock off five lines from some chance-heard remark,
A tic observed, or mood or clothes gone wild.

A longer piece for loves, coworkers, friends,
People you’ve bonded with, played some life game;
Can’t be so flip – unless the portrait bends,
Fictionalizing thoughts in formal frame.

And closer to you than your own bed mate
Is, tougher yet, perspective and full view
Of parents, more than threaded through your fate,
They’re warp and weft, the loom, the weavers too.

So, last of all, the golden trophy shelf:
That great and grand grotesquery, yourself.

Published online: The Poetry Porch, October 2015

FLAGS WE HAVE FEARED

The Swastika, that ancient Vedic sign,
The lightning wheels with which the Aryan bands
In lightning war overrun other lands,
Wheeled juggernauts that crush, self-claimed divine.

Hammer and Sickle, commoners’ work-tools;
Weapons for rising up, and tearing down
The castle of the rich, the bourgeois town;
Fake honor to the poor the Party rules.

A flag with Stripes, memorial for flogged slaves,
Striped jail clothes for resulting underclass;
And Stars like bullets through the windshield’s glass
For leaders by the CIA shot down,
Star earned for each election overthrown,
Star for each land the flag invades, or ‘saves’.

Published: Ambit No. 196, UK, April 2009