A decomposer
of brutish sins oft
repeated, I worm
past the pretty germs
shut tight in candied
shells, bursting to birth
untapped corruptions.
It's on the sawdust
dollops buried deep
I feed, biting bits
from soiled skins riddled
by regrets of not
offending good more.
Turning their oaken
flavors o'er gently,
my mouth will work them
down to a relish
of soft, black leavings.

In that age of aged seasons
predating our own's four-square rhyme,
a reasonable jape was hatched
beaked but hairy to a guilt-free Hen
whose humors ran with jaw-slackening
creatures, foul and not at all bird-like.

Soon after its mixed-up cracking,
two prattle-prone Wrens hopped to spread
rumors of an un-chickity chick
and the ungodly origins
of fatherless yowls. Their tittered jeers
found welcome ears, and Mother Hen preened
her babe chased by merciless guffaws.

This Hen was not one to lay
down meekly, and a never stony
tongue rolled out its antidote myth
to a pair of gabby Gulls: "My child
may look not-much, but he's divine
engendered and miraculous born.
Sure he's messy, ah, but you'll see
he'll grow to be, much-much-more than
any feathery tykes your like did bear."

She clucked it so seriously,
who were they to doubt her? The plumed
sniggering ceased. But before another
grateful day could dawn in a hallelujah
glare of right angles, out pecking
up a snack, Mother made eye
contact with an unfortunate Fate
brandishing his lucky-gripped ax.

What of her wonder-why, joke of a boy?
Left alone at straw-pocket home,
waiting for his Hen to return,
he starved then decayed to hollow bones,
and was never thought of again.

As my illogic breaks, I'll robot make
to be this soul's chamber,
robbing a piecemeal joy from misfit toys
tossed out for fine tuning

by toddlers cheery mad to gorge on fads.
I'll take their T-Rex head,
with droopy lids that wink as if to drink
the world's wide-shallow stares,

plug its plastic prongs in torso of tin
while twin squeeze-box arms splay
to tie magnetic bows round pads below
gold, plush lion cub's legs.

This moppet of mixed breeds I'll learned feed
with animate cunning
to be ruled by charmed laws that give it pause
when whole-sum circumstance

tangles fuzzy circuits. Then a circus-
wire's unbalancing act
I'll paste from templed flesh to doll enmeshed
by transfuse rigging,

and as coil comes to slough, just as I'm off,
I'll flip that gilded switch,
implanting my spirit into a bit
of copper-hued country.

I may or may not be:
a posited feline absurdity
curled up on comma paws
inside Herr Schrödinger's *****-trapped box.

Its flask is uncertain
whether to smash-poison my mighty mews
and spew a gray-mouthed cloud
that inky clots neither's sharpening quill.

Entangled buts become
stranded as knots of fuzzy pink yarn, to send
either-or careening
arm-and-arm down imperfect pictured paths,

where Epimetheus
stands, ready to wed Pandora anew,
and doom-birth our many
worlds with the lifting of my thousand lids.

Five points flicker-tease,
"How will you stop our yawning

gaps? Can you tip-toe
tap us out a doubter's ledge,

foot-con Pentagon's
firm routes? Or diag'nals dance

to coin Pentacle's
conjuring? We'd relish reels,

spun round in Circle's
blur — unbroken, unending."

Sleep-nestled in perhaps,
she unfolds comfortably
in-woven tales—
cocoons
self-spun over-long ago—
till head-to-toe rapt,
her mind swings to-and-fro,
up-tethered with a single strand.

A silky pod it floats some-
time jostled by the sing-song voices,
of snake-tongued sirens—
seeming unattached—
that each day drift in,
and try to lure her out
with their stories of fabled lands
and distant faces.

Yet, warmly tucked within
her soothing dreams,
she sleeps on not
eager to join in clockwork worlds
or their storybook readings of love.
Instead she’ll await her own
free-form scenes to unfurl
outside on painted wings.

Bauble brothers, they hang red,
one rotund, one spouted,
both made a magenta
melancholy by the fog.

It whispers white nightly,
slipping ****** seeds
down with paper-funnel tales
of supple branches stripped,

and the skin-cracking eyes,
coming too soon to cull.