Say 'hello' to the Earth when they bury you
Say 'how do you do' to the Worms and Ants
They're here to spread your Atoms
They're here to make you new
Matter cannot be created or destroyed
Your Atoms have always been here and they always will be
Welcome home

Confusing it is
that taste between
passion fruit or **** ant

My mind is boggled
which way this is leaning

Your unsavory parts
are being completely outweighed
presently
by a tangy **** yet sweet delivery

It's just I always am bird-*******
but coming up with the wrong duck
not noticing I've brought home
the wooden decoy
until I'm already sopping wet
wearing stink of the marsh

Why am I wired this way?
Got to get out of this yard
but the lessons are hard learned

So I keep climbing the fence
and now it's you on the other side

Waggin' that **** tang!

Lordy, the chase is on.

The ogre that I am, I sit in my man-cave.
It’s bathed in light from my TV and laptop.
Each is a portal to our ugly world.
Regulated crystal-city skyscrapers
Form Giant’s Causeways.
Aircraft eagle overhead
Reminding me of vultures
And 9\11.

Cars beetling about the suburbs,
Some Beetles, Ha Ha.
River highways cascading cars.
Ants rush everywhere,
A seething nest.

So many an ant,
Holding a conch to the ear,
Or staring mesmerised at that tiny screen.
Yoda fingers his phone…

And me I sit here,
Metamorphosing metaphors
For a while
Before I visit Facebook Land
Once again.

Paul Butters

dance
garlic back into
fashionism
read a honey
queen bee
sun
is my
kingly
name of hexatriatic
playful wrestlings
with the soldiers
of a colony
earth-wide
mega-argentinian
playing my tongue bitterly
with the taste
a test for explorers
free protein
legal
antassassination

I felt like a backpacker that night.
I think it was the katydids.
At home it’s the frogs,
all shouting over each other, but somehow
finding a rhythm.

But here,
a pulse presses into me in my sleep
and I roll over to face the seething embers.
I know I’ve drawn things out with X,
but this is what narcissism means to me:
stoking the embers each time.

Tonight I am a backpacker
on the west side of a mountain.
Having slept through the sunset,
now I’m lying awake—
sleepless and small—
as ants find their way across my skin.

If they’re not sleeping, they must be working—
long jaunts between brief naps—
while the queen sleeps.

When I’m home,
I’ll close my windows and,
drown these embers in dry reds—
shiraz and merlot—
and sleep like the queen for once.

Ants must wonder if I have emotions
How could I?
Ending them in one short motion
Ants must think i'm such a creep
Who am I?
Why do I stare so long and deep?
If a giant walked up to your home
And refused to give you time alone
If he smashed your city on his own
Would it not chill you to the bone?
Those brave little *******.

ANTLIKE STRENGTHS
A poem by Tricia Hague-Barrett 1993

An ant carries its large load across the cracks
in the path on its way homeward
Nothing gets in its way
Nothing prevents him from succeeding,

If only I could have seen the end in the beginning
where struggles are frequent but passable,
testing but not breaking my resolve to give in
to the desparate feelings of loneliness, tiredness.

Ant-like, I too have to learn to carry the heavy load,
The Teaching load, the Administrative load,
carry it across potholes, ditches, mountains
and through distant valleys of calmness.

Turbulent tests, stumbling stones,
each there to guide me along the way
Like guardian angels, each one
Heralding the Dawn of a New Day.

Ends.
(C) 1993

When you took our family tree up by the root my heart got tangled in the mess. Ants crawl under the door carrying away the branches laying on the floor. Now there is a hole in the middle of the room that goes down six feet from where I walk with my heavy shoes. Old seeds fade to dust like our memories like our family. I try planting the fresh ones in my chest but I fail to fill them with liquid because all the water inside me falls from my eyes to the sheets to floor where it has made an ocean of forgotten memories. Hopefully the ants will soon take the door with them, so I can swim to shore.

Am I the only one who wonders,
what ants do all the time?
When they walk seemingly without a pattern,
do they know where they are going?
What do ants think of us, do we scare them,
or are we not importand enough to care about?
How do they communicate?
Can they be sad?
I keep thinking about the ants?
Do they ever think like this, about the flies? Or spiders, or butterflies?
Who will ever know...