They brought them
from the hollar
to the barge
to the field ~
into the wallows
in prayer
skinny little pinkers
cropped by ivory gates
buzzed with hot wire
hooked on bug worm
whistling dixie
around scrummers
and **** pen

peckers squawk
down eden lane
(nipping at jean lint
and fraystring)
deep in the hollows
a mad crow
(with steady tap)
the snouts high
on grunters
and squealers
stomping past
the feather pack

folded fingers
on the gatekeeper
(an engineer by
trade they'd say)
pigtails and
slack line
down the dusty lane
a snap of the jawbone
and lawn chairs settle
(facing north)
the bold script
and chimes
uneasy

they stained the back deck today (with a hard to match 7 periwinkle)
400 square feet of knotted pine (in a striking rivet sequence)
red ant drivers (who can forget those little ******)
caked fir needles & feather cone
bug hologram & cedar moss
graffiti crack & cut joist
wheel rut & pick
pike stain (s)
sow bugs
electric
blower
purple
fueled
washer
missing
foul bits
and two of
its former pins
somewhere near
the erratic 9th stroke the
side kick (and his sloppy dullard)
fell sadly in a cacophony of sick laughter
anxious peckers, poinsettias, grub box, rail stems
lacewings (ladylike in their task), third door down windows
old ergonomic chairs (so highly touted in the checkout isle at Lowes)
all for not, I guess ~ seems they never reviewed the Homestead Manual on Fine Deck Painting ~

I ain’t got no intimate, ain’t got no stiletto heels
Ain’t got no Lsd, ain’t got no smack
Ain’t got no partners, ain’t got no drill
Ain’t got no slapstick, ain’t got no hanky—panky
Ain’t got no Lsd, no slot to mount

Ain’t got no castrato, ain’t got no crumpet
Ain’t got no conjoined twins, ain’t got no nuns or eunuchs
Ain’t got no whipcord, ain’t got no adoration
Ain’t got no *******, ain’t got no stimulant
Ain’t got no ******

Ain’t got no oscillation, no shags
No uniform, no parts
No smack, no drill
No partners, no peccadillo
Ain’t got no stimulant

Ain’t got no whipcord, no propagators
No titbits, no intimate
I jabbered, I ain’t got no uniform, no hanky—panky
No peccadillo, ain’t copulated till one is blue in the face to have a funny feeling
And I ain’t got no ******

Oh, but what have I copulated, oh, what have I copulated
Let me tell what I copulated and nobody’s going to enlarge telescopic

I got my ***** on my face
My extra—sensory perceptions, my knobs
My ******, peckers and my *******
I got my stuck—out tongue

I got my tentacle, my proboscis
My *****, my *******
My thingummies, my cockles of the heart and my posterior
I got my *******

I got my thingummies, my talons
My ball and socket joints, my forelegs
My hooves, my pincers and my snorker
Got my crest

I got *****, I’ve inseminated cheerleaders
I’ve got bottomgremlins and hacksawhoodoo
And Mephistophelian juggernauts too like you

I got my *****, my pistil
My ESP, my knobs
My vaginas, my peckers and my *******
I got my stuck-out tongue

I got my tentacle, my proboscis
My ***** and my *******
My *****, my ***** and my posterior
I inseminated my ****** sorbet

I got my thingummies, my talons
My ball and socket joints, my forelegs
My hooves, my pincers and my snorker
Got my crest

I got my *****, I got my slipperiness, my *****
I got *****

~

fowl flock to a gathering,
exactly why? no one knows.
an unkindness of ravens,
a ****** of crows;
a siege of blue heron,
gather geese in a horde;
seem to come in their sadness,
but stay for the show.
see swan sail in wedges,
jay scoff in their scold;
assembly, their strength,
nom de plume from of old.

ask me why do they gather?
could it be they’re unhappy?
might we also feel slighted,
a disservice agreed;
if our strength were declared
our insufficiency?
why do finches and
hummingbirds meet in a charm?
penguins, get to huddle,
and in happiness, those larks?

the cranes come in dances,
in company those parrots;
to parliaments owls,
in wisdom who-hoo-ing;
flamingoes to stand,
for an eagle’s convocation?
no, a nye’s not unpleasant,
for a pheasant you see;
and benign is a bevy,
quail flush neath a tree.

but, ’tis a bit scary,
lurking turkey in gangs,
hawk’s shadowy cast;
and warblers in confusion,
with buzzards in wake;
a wisp full of snipe,
whisp’ring, “good night”;
yet glorious are pelicans,
a squadron in flight;

and nothing so stirring, as
a starling’s constellation,
while an asylum’s
assembly for loons,
and a quarrel of sparrows,
are entirely drowned out,
by a drumming of peckers,
the wood kind, that is!

while sticks and stones,
may break all one’s bones;
those labels and words, do
leave a sting and a hurt;
all human, one race,
can unkindness defer,
diffusing by choosing,
our union assert!
but slinging maligning,
and kicking of dirt,
by abusers and losers,
let's leave for the birds!

~

*post script.

numerous fellow poets far more skilled than i, have posted a variety of well-written pieces using fowl flocking terminology. this is intended to be an assembly of the sometimes-silly, often-absurd and mostly-always-humorous assignments of those flocking terms, used in an imagined treatise about the hurtful labels we humans use to judge one another; labels that vilify, rather than unify.  for would not a battle that hasn’t any "winner" be far better fought hand-in-hand, than hand-to-hand?

terms for flocking fowl in order of use
(a few fowl have two flocking terms, and some flocking terms are claimed by two fowls)

an unkindness (ravens)
a ****** (crows)
a siege (herons)
a horde (geese)
a wedge (swans)
a scold (jays)
a charm (hummingbird, finches)
a huddle (penguins)
a happiness (larks)
a dance (cranes)
a company (parrots)
a parliament (owls)
a stand (flamingos)
a convocation (eagles)
a nye (pheasants)
a bevy (quail)
a flush (also quail)
a cast (hawks)
a gang (turkeys)
a wisp (snipes)
a squadron (pelicans)
a confusion (warblers)
a wake (buzzards)
an asylum (loons)
a constellation (starlings)
a quarrel (sparrows)
a drumming (woodpeckers)

oh yes, there are many more.  i'd love to see your favorite(s) left in the comments.
Steve (:

buffalo head cloud
rawhide drums
saline rollers at tantalus cross
ominous light
forms a short mile away
head lice
and peckers
tap the metal track

shovel train pings
the night quiet
moonlight
shines in
geometric form
arches and skiddles
and skirting reflections
(a vast connection of
grand design)

7 horns
at the passing
(oh that cold metal joy!)
stirring the blades
and ground cover
you better not turn old friend
just nod,
and cut what you need

it’s a bitter run
on the winter line
(with the finest
of wheels
and runners)
hold tight
on the pulley
the canyon wires
are clipping

there’s a gateway
to the copper town
with a key held
by coveted few
you can spot the
riders in their
box cars
watching closely
at the chunnel’s
dark turn

we’d walk
the lines often
(and put an ear to the ground)
the mine town still
and barren
hidden treasures
and pocket *******
settled deep
in a tranquil, stolid place

The wind blows harder up here,
As though it is trying to push
these skyscrapers toppling over.

The air is purer,
easier on the nose.
The normal gas fumes from the city buses
and the polluted, busy streets don't threaten to strangle you
when you're too high for them to reach.

The people are tiny.
Like ants in chaos,
scrambling
because you accidentally set a foot
on their grainy mound.

The sounds are distant.
Taxi horns' blow sounds like squeaks of mice
while construction workers' jack hammers mimic wood peckers.

Clouds suffocate the sky,
smothering the sunlight,
refusing to let it shine as it should.

Temptation sneaks up on me,
beckoning me
over the edge of the building.

Would it be such a bad idea?
Just one move, that's all it would take.
No effort required at all.

I picture myself jumping,
as I have multiple times before.

The wind in my hair,
gravity pulling me in,
the free falling feeling in my stomach.

And at this point,
Temptation almost makes me do it,
End it all.
But I decide against it.
And even though I have won
once again,
I still feel
defeated.

How
I retry
Backside Pen Slide
Lyrics spirits quips glide
Elbows Shins Blood Blot Dried
When Wind Blows Wicked Words Rise
Idioms Soul Grind Infinite rails Applied
Thoughts Ollie Pop Manual quill Pipe bomb
Ultra Stick Ink Drips 360 Plot Shov-it Twist
Push Kick I Pedal Prose Skate Tricks, Morphemes Stick.
Perpetual Pendulums Prop People to Place Peckers in Potato Grits

Times Up!

Dapple gray harbour
…humpback in breach!
a brown ruffed grouse
with apricot cheeks!

Pileated peckers
in caramel trees
the swirling fall mist
and gusty cold breeze

Bonfires and embers
in a harvest-moon sky
the cider house rules
and baled-hay ride

Warm roasted chestnuts
cozy fall stews
scarecrows and pumpkins
those dark autumn blues!

Parkas and sweaters
with cinnamon shades
a hot mulled wine
in the cornfield maze

Pine cones and acorns
on a brisk fall morn
frosty cold breath
and flannels well worn

Ghosts and goblins
…ole hallows eve!
the landscape covered
in dry golden leaves

A grateful Thanksgiving
with family and song
daylight (un) savings
where shadows grow long!

A north wind whispers
the harvest complete
stack up the woodpile
winter’s in reach!

Storm clouds brewing
the foliage flies
let’s spark up the franklin
and scurry inside!

Pull up a blanket
and call in the cat
...it's a perfect time
for a fireside chat!

No vacuum jet engined cleaning appliance can sound like mountain wind drivin through leaf bare trees. Like a a wood peckers nonchalant brain damage or a boiling something in this woods.
The boiling is jabbing my brain like impatient school nun with rulers.
I'm almost there. I almost got it.

Not like a figwort but not an aster, either. Could he be a buttercup
with sepals, no petals, but sepals like petals? Alan is a bluebeech,
an ash if his books sell. Quick shake hands. Zach's bald ok, a
magnolia, cone-like fruits a bridge to his Neanderthal father.
When did Ben become a chestnut lover? It's said women are practical
but there's much variation in their leaves, ovaries. Many are older,
stumps, snags for peckers and porcupines, teachers, feeders, seeders.
What did the wood thrush sing
                                                      teachi­ng its young thrush meanings?

Sometimes a mushroom. Did you know such fungi are mostly protein?
Mushrooms could replace meat, and the dead, the dead's feet, white
as pyrola, could replace the living. Well, we worry. Will we, bad luck,
be extinguished. Denizens of convenience stores think who cares, will
I beat the reaper? Hope sempiternally springs. Things rarely clear
as sun among the sundews. Eating huckleberries from your kayak.
What Paulinaq says is live your life and then your death until nothing's
      left.
Then thou shalt be bereft
                                            of the heavy sackcloth of the soil, soul.

Said to Mrs. Buckthorn: good poets imitate, great poets steal.
I think she's more an apple tree. Or pear. Good to eat,
amenable to loving. Rose or Ericaceae, the differences make the
difference. Emerson and Rylin Malone are dead. The dead
are dumb, the dust won't speak. And this deep, dull and dark
blessing's a horizontal reserve. Moonlit. Mr. Hickory is actually a
      yellow birch,
holy and exfoliating. Busy spilling seed on the surface of the snow.
Teaching essay
                       writing, algebra, earth science, branches of government.

I would be a cypress, cedar, branches calligraphy brushes, divorced
      from desert.
It takes a divorce for one to know one knows no one, not only one's
      wife
but your very sons who will always choose the open flower bud.
Good, as they should. Their bones are your bones, strange bones,
      and a
strange selection of their words. They are Uvularia sessifolia (wild
      oats)
and Polygonatum biflorum (Solomon's seal). They outlast the
      holocaust
or not, they're made of matter. These windows need a good
      cleaning.
Leaf-raking. Dusting for ghosts. Ah, sweet peace, perfect rest, there
      are
no ghosts
           adults are trees, teens are shrubs, and children are herbaceous.

Coyote saw the ducks.
He was trickster but toaday
He was creator.
We all agree here
That something is wrong.
He said to the ducks we dont feel
Rite about this.
Brother duck wise knew
He needed to dive and see what
Rested under the deep water.
The second he had roots is bill.
Coyote knew what he wanted.
I will make companionship
Between every creature.
And give man the tools
To live with us.
Coyote made arrows and spears.
Man will hunt us but he will honor
What I gave him.
With music of flutes
And a boy will chase for medicne elk.
With my arrows he will miss and find
Wind blowing through the wood peckers
Hollow branch with holes.
We will dance and celebrate his marriage
When ever the suns resting heart shapes the
Clouds into the ducks sioulette.

we started school during
the Korean "police action"
like extra syllables made
murderous mayhem more
palatable than calling it
another dreadful WAR,
half a decade after we won
the last one

those of us who survived yet another
crazy Asian WAR are now fading fast

I take in news of our passing
with my morning coffee, reading
the obits like they were the sports
scores

and every one I see whose numbers
are smaller than mine remind me I
am playing Russian roulette with the clock,
every hour

were it within my power,
I'd spin those hands backwards
to a day before cybertime

when Donny, Johnny and I went
to the park to toss a hardball into
well pocketed gloves, and discovered
the delights of peanut butter and
marshmallow cream sandwiches

back, back to a day Ike was pres,
and I would watch The Twilight Zone
with religious fidelity--back, to a time
so ancient Maris had not yet slammed in
number 61, chipping away
at the Babe's immortality

some told us the end was near,
and death by fierce fire was a reasonable fear
long before the missiles of October
and JFK's intrepid blockade

but the mushroom clouds never did appear,
and here I am with Medicare card in hand,
living in the same land where men with funny
hair make ominous "tweets"

and Manchild dictators with tiny peckers
lob missiles into the sea

wishing Clark Kent were still around
ready to don his cape and take a leap
and a bound, and save us
from ourselves

but first he would have to find a phone booth
in which to change...

I woke from a dream this morning
with three penises
and three sets of testicles
sprouting from my groin

I was astonished
wondering about the implications
could they all perform?
could I have *** with three women?
or three men?
which gender did these penises prefer?
and how would that work?

or would I be too embarrassed by this mutation to ever have *** again?
I imagined a hand touching down there and felt
extreme embarrassment
no, this was definitely the end of my *** life
I would never have *** again

then something shifted
in my mind
and I woke
from THAT dream
original factory settings restored (I checked)

relieved (so relieved)

this was one problem the universe had not thrown in my lap (haha)
I can still see those tiny peckers though
like a bouquet of newborn masculinity

what high jinks
are going on
at the bottom of the ocean in my brain?

Boredom exceeding the limit, I reached out
To the shelf full of cassettes and
Sliding my fingers down the names
Stumbled upon one, dustier than the rest
That one, obviously older, bore the name
'Du Dlux Dlan' (Which you may say rhymes with Ku Klux ****)
Something he'd bought feeling a liking for its name
Its quirkiness, as was his wont
I played the cassette, anticipating a flurry of blows and kicks
A curio. to unravel the mystery of its name
The movie , as it turned out, was not a movie
But what I think they call a footage,
On the screen three crosses erected in a desert land, with a man hanging on each.
The three men were bearded, the one in the middle
Looked calm and serene ( as if he'd been tranquilized)in spite of his ****** body, all battered and beyond recovery
The other two, I found , were kicking and whining (in their constrained state, of course.
Kicking with their nails, that is)
Hanging men get their peckers stiff and up, I knew it
There were soldiers around them, occassionally raising their spears and with its tip, tickling the men on the crosses out of their wits.
And then...there was a gunshot
And the clatter of horseshoes
Holding their guns aloft, rode in a pack of three cowboys
Then pointing their guns at the hanging men, they exclaimed:
'What the....., they are nailed to the crosses!"
Wasting no time, they swerved their horses around and rode away, leaving the men on the crosses for dead and me, gazing at the blank screen of the TV and asking:
'Who could the Du Dlux Dlan be?
The three men on the crosses or the three wranglers?'

One may find it boring or lonely
Living the life of a tree
Yet with all of its daytime happenings and biotic surrounding,
It just couldn't be
The tree is covered my the dome-like sky
And sat on by countless birds
It is home to many insects
And food for vegetarian herds
It is known as a shady place for us to lay
And by gusts of wind is blown around
Is pecked and pecked by pecking peckers
And occasionally peed on by a hound
It's day can be eventful
And seems pretty interesting to me
So I won't find a trees life lonely of boring
For it cannot be

as the tendrils of the night fog
slither around thick oak
bull frogs sing  and croak
when grey dove coo
the morning sun stretches
and fawn bed close to mother
all peckers begin their work early
with red robins following suit
today red fox trots to the river
as honey bees rouse beneath quick feet

down the stairs, a dark spiral
one of them, a mischievous one
made me take a wide tumble to the door
from second last step; desirous of that other one

she ga' me the old sammies and sugar
to take to the sweet peckers
who push such golden orbs
and there's red lines to fill the blue ones, too

quite deliberately yours
if love claws its way to you, why not acquiesce?
do be a divine little squirrel, give in sanely
eat your **** nuts

We are lost.
Gone.
Tomorrow arrived,
we were not ready.

The future showed up,
we showed our ***.

Since we couldn’t
have the anti-gravity
boots,
the city in the
clouds,
or
free healthcare for
everyone,
we settled on the 24-hour
******* tapas bar,
turning it into an
all-you-can-choke-down
affair.

We called it progress.

We don’t need smart-bomb
drone strikes
when we’ve got
over-loved,
under-disciplined,
entitled church-mongers
inside our Wal-Mart,
maskless,
during a *******
global pandemic.

Not to worry though,
Jesus surely has the wheel.

Ah, who am I kidding?!

Jesus isn’t ‘up there’;
he’s down here
making sure
we can still have celery
and
strawberries
to forget about
in our refrigerators.

They’ll go limp,
like our overused
out-of-touch-with-reality
peckers.

Maybe then we’ll
be a little less inclined to
**** everything
up.

Not to worry,
the anti-anti-*******
industry means
more than having a stable
means means.
You know what I mean?
Is that mean to say?

It doesn’t ******* matter
because it’s true.

We march, we riot,
we loot, we get shot,
or
we shoot.

Where in all of this remains our
fundamental humanity?

Is it still on the altar?
Still hanging from the cross?

Doesn’t really matter,
does it?
The dollar is the boss.

At what cost though?

How do we pay what we owe
if we don’t know who the debt belongs to;
who holds the promissory note?

Is it a blood debt?

It sure feels like it
these days.

Who,
in the end,
really gives a ****?

We’re paying on credit anyway
&
horrors abound as the massive
massacre moves ever onward
toward some unknown
finish line.

Not to worry.

We’ll figure out what we need;
what we’re after;
who’s the master,
who’s the slave.

It all comes out in the wash.
The Blood of the Lamb
or Uncle Sam.

Not to worry.

As long as we’re clocked in,
everything will
be just
fine.

*  

-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications 2020