A CHILDISH PICTURE
A hardened rainbow arched in sky.
It wouldn't go away;
Stuck, like a child's picture there.
The firemen tried to hose it down.
The army and the air-force and the navy tried to catch it
With guns and nets and anchors but they failed.
They failed : That night most people felt
Its grim static presence : Seven shades of greys
Lit up with light of moon and stars.
At dawn the normal spectrum shone once more,
Arriving with a preservation order, level II.
Then someone started charging for the view
But a flock of swallows came
And took it in their beaks and flew
Away and went wherever swallows go.
RETREAT
Not a new idea,
that the world retracts in fear
of its end that pesky man contrives,
that birds fly back to eggs
and eggs roll back to tubes
and, shrivelling, all mammal wombs go dry.
Silly, and in fright, we shall devolve to younger selves;
as ticking clocks reverse,
minerals drill back to earth,
the grass and trees, when time retreats, shrink under mulch,
as dancing sand coagulates to rock,
and I watch my pessimistic plastic pen disappear,
doomed, as it burrows to its origin.
A massive whale clambers up from sea to reclaim land.
Another beach day ruined!
THERE WAS THIS POET
There was this poet who wrote this poem
about a race of worms to whom the gods granted
great brain power beyond all other lives
on experimental planet issue #2
[for now they do not speak of that distressing #1].
But it did not take them long, alas, to elect
a twisty pharaoh raised up high, to lead the coiled mass,
or shall we call him king, or tsar, perhaps
—one who manufactures foes to squeeze and rout,
erecting then tall phallic monuments of earth.
Between the wars the tsar collected cars
and caused a wormy palace to be built
and stashed large mounds of money cash
in a nearby mountain country
and crony worms did likewise because they verily could.
He chopped with spades or poisoned all his enemies,
gave medals to fat thugs in uniform,
who chased or locked away the worms they didn't like.
That poet, too, who burrows deep, eating the bitter brown,
may one day be found, up top, bisected by a trowel.
Flights, Issue Thirteen, August 2024
Flight of the dragonfly 