if I were a frog
first I’d dart my tongue out
and catch a fly

then with the same sticky tongue
I’d catch a human
actually as many as I can
and all the cars and streetlamps
and some mud and puddles of water
to sauce the whole thing
and eat them all whole
in one roll

And then I’d do the same thing
always with my sticky tongue
deracinate the trees, the rocks and mountains
and all living things
(all humans first I’d dispose of)
and all objects and planets and stars and space
and quasars and matter and anti-matter and zero
all stuck on my tongue and all rolled in one
and all these I’ll just swallow
if I were a frog
and I won’t stop till there’s nothing
except me
one gargantuan frog
and then I’ll burp
and then I’ll croak

*and then maybe I’ll burst

I had this dream
and then it became a nightmare
and there was no line between
wakefulness and sleep
and it came to be that
all the books and print
and all discourse
Animal, human, in Nature and Divine
all discourse floated as sentences
And all sentences but a universe
of phrases and clauses
And each became just a word
so a universe of words
separate, individual, discrete
meaning in itself but unconnected
And then all words disappeared
And meaning too
And there were letters
And then just one letter
And none then…that’s all there was…
…or was not…
and there was no line between
wakefulness and sleep…

*there is no line between
wakefulness and sleep…

1
He'd love her
and then the coldness
of marriage took love
away from him
and the coldness turned into suspicion
and then into an obsession:
and she was an inconvenience

he murdered her a Friday
night
suffocated her with her pillows
it was easy;
like Othello did
but she was no Desdemona;
and he heard her whisper with her last breath:
"I'll have your eyes"
he cut her up in manageable parts,
and buried her below the floorboards
in the study

2
It is a year later
and he is at the computer
and far below lies parts of his wife
but now his wife is smiling
she's on screen
smiling like a Greek Goddess
and he sits transfixed
and she says:
"You are Oedipus, darling -
I will have your eyes"
She is smiling
He is willing
Beside the printer are paperclips
He undoes two
She beckons; she smiles
and she whispers
that same deathbed whisper:
"I'll have your eyes"
And he is Oedipus
Just paperclips will do
He gouges one eye out
And he gouges the other too
It is easy


She lies deep below
below the floorboards;
She need whisper no longer
And he is become Oedipus,
eyes gouged,
blind like the Greek Homer

At the going down of the sun
will the world be less complete,
the cinched robe of night less intolerable,
as she ebbs away on cosmic string,
emulating a massless, dazed neutrino
blinking in and out of existence,
unobserved and uneffected,
liquored and unloved?

In the wake of a June flowering,
when foxglove lures the honeybee
in six day flash, bud to corolla,
blossom to blossom, parade of stigmas,
digitalis stamen braved, anther at his back,
the bee comes gathering where none else dare.

in Portugal austerity is biting...
good luck everybody.


Sat around the crowded table
Wrangling chair legs and buttering
Conversations about banalities whilst
Being bathed by full cool moonlight
Is of course a fair enough sweet delight.

Yet there is smoke in the air!
Then one by one my souls depart;
Stunning my heart yet keeping me close
Causing fears to become unshadowed.
As somehow, I must open my eyes to find
There is always a child quite near.

Oh how do I keep it fed?

We sat in the overlook above the Serpent Mound
in the heat of that garish July afternoon,
sunlight scorching our pallid skin,
like rays through a magnifying glass,
till we could endure no more and
sought the shroud of skyscraper elms ---
halfway houses of leaf, bark and cellulose.
Minutes before we'd signed our names in the visitors book,
like giddy high-schoolers autographing a yearbook,
recording our wayward lover's sojourn
to a site the Hopewell worshipped in celebration of existence.

For what purpose do we worship this ground?
I wondered as we walked beside the curving icon,
that undulated in rolled earthen coils down the *****,
sine-waves loosed from a colossal oscilloscope.
Are these coils symbolic of our future's meandering relationship?
Her exploring hand upon my ****
drew me from thought to evaluation of this unexpected caress.
But for the heat, I'd have shown her what idle foreplay begets!
Great Serpent, this was not Eden's carnal karma
acted out in a second Genesis! ---
though a symbolic egg spews from your mouth.

out goes
software developer
web designer
computer ****
mercahndise managers

vacancies now:
virtchandise manager
cloud transformation officers
outcome aggregator
data evangelist
sensemaking analyst
sales ninja
digital dynamo
happiness advocate
online community facilitator
web funster


*you ready?

Sadness never signalled us a sign from the cosmos,
left us to decipher the bones of history in quest of omens.
Unheeded, despair overflowed us like a desert sand storm,
buried us in credit ennui and economic laissez-faire.

World leaders formed escalating groups, G-5, G-12, G-20,
still the banks camouflaged in oppressor's language,
invented derivatives against all uncertainty, save their own,
till Wall Street acquired the stench of backed up urinals.

Only when the desperate sallied into the world's streets,
emoting songs that gushered from the wells of outrage,
did rolling blackouts of democracy unearth the buried cities,
freeing a wind that whispers ruin in uncompromising sunlight.