"antennae" poems
Dogs take new friends abruptly and by smell,
Cats' meetings are neat, tactual, caressive.
Monkeys exchange their fleas before they speak.
Snakes, no doubt, coil by coil reach mutual knowledge.
We then, at first encounter, should be silent;
Not court the cortex but the epidermis;
Not work from inside out but outside in;
Discover each other's flesh, its scent and texture;
Familiarize the sinews and the nerve-ends,
The hands, the hair - before the inept lips open.
Instead of which we are resonant, explicit.
Our words like windows intercept our meaning.
Our four eyes fence and flinch and awkwardly
Wince into shadow, slide oblique to ambush.
Hands stir, retract. The pulse is insulated.
Blood is turned inwards, lonely; skin unhappy ...
While always under all, but interrupted,
Antennae stretch ... waver ... and almost ... touch.
7.1k
Trash can, wastebasket;
the place we throw it all away.
Used tissues--soggy mascara, dried *****
or the babies that would never be,
and the heaps of food waste, human waste.
Wasted human.
Why do we take ourselves and the people we used to love,
toss people and our person deep within a hole of shame,
darkness, misery, guilt, worry, frustration, fear?
If someone only said to you, or to me, when we dig deep
into the ground and find the place no one will find us
or them, the people we are burying--
if they only said,
"You are not trash."
Our emotions refuse to become refuse, the remains of
being unwanted, as we perceive ourselves to be.
But we is just me, and even though I can't hear the voice
I long to hear above my own, the sounds reverberate in my chest,
next to my heart, where I heard them last.
The last time we spoke your fingers did not reach for mine.
Your jeans did not rip in the same one spot.
The dog that I picked that you picked after you went back,
his tail wagging all the way on the ride back to his new home,
did not kiss my face and my eyes and ears like he loves to do.
Even though you didn't still love me, you did before,
now thrown hastily, yet decidedly in the trash can outside your door.
I dropped off the last remnant of your physical being,
an old rabbit-eared antennae.
I didn't, couldn't look in your trash can,
or stand in the driveway longer than was needed to drop and run
the hell away from crumbling gravel, a window newly aluminum foiled, and the motorcycle kept under surveillance at all times.
I hope he looked on his camera screen and saw walking,
talking, feeling, breathing human trash gliding
down the sidewalk, feet pattering into a jog.
The grass licked my feet and tangled in my toes on the way
to the one place my sighs could sink lower than my feet,
deep into the warm upholstery of my car seat, the grandma car,
the dented, imperfect, but mostly reliable car
away, far away, to a place where someone would look curiously,
pick up the trash, my trash, me, and say,
"It's beautiful."
Jul 4, 2016
Jul 4, 2016 at 12:04 AM UTC
In a second grade classroom
a tiny ant with a treasure thinks only of taking it to his colony.
A big hero he will be.
So he drags a piece of popcorn much bigger than he.
he drags
and pulls
and tugs
On a second grade classroom floor,
the ant's work is hard but will be worth it.
A big hero he will be.
So he drags a piece of popcorn much bigger than he.
he drags
and pulls
and tugs
On a second grade classroom rug,
the ant's task seems insurmountable but he knows of no other way.
So for an hour, he retraces his path backwards dragging a piece of popcorn
across the classroom rug.
He drags
and tugs
and pulls
In the open of a second grade classroom,
the ant feels exposed on the carpet but cover is closer now, he can feel it.
It's just there, where the wall meets the carpet.
A space just big enough to hide an ant.
Closer and closer.
He tugs and pulls and drags his prize closer still
Pulling and dragging the popcorn lurches across the carpet.
His rear legs reach cover
Then his thorax, his abdomen, his head with antennae and mandibles
then
The Problem.
and...
In a second grade classroom
a line of popcorn rests
where the carpet meets the wall.
Aug 27, 2012
Aug 27, 2012 at 8:33 PM UTC
Dusk!
With a creepy, tingling sensation you hear the fluttering of leathery wings!
Bats!
Glowing red eyes and glistening fangs,
These unspeakable giant bugs drop into view.*
Fibrous wings furred like a moth,
Big ears are just a membranous extension of antennae.
Flying in search of a flower’s pollen laden froth,
Silent except for the hum and squeak of echolocation.
Trap bats in attics, butterflies in nets.
No rabies feared, no bedbug bites to itch.
Clawed feet ****** and grab like praying mantis pincers;
Bloated stomach slopes like a pudgy beetle.
Jaws manipulate like an ant, excise like scissors;
Soft hair rustles like a wooly caterpillar.
They live in darkness, centipedes do too,
Come out at night like cockroaches tend to.
Skittering through the night like daddy long-legs,
Noses snubbed like bumble bee faces.
Wind turbines endanger bats,
Like fans endanger lightning bugs.
Only one percent of bats are vampiric,
Like only a small percentage of spiders are poisonous.
Dawn!
With a creepy, tingling sensation you hear the fluttering of leathery wings!
Bats!
Bats are bugs, aren’t they?
May 4, 2010
May 4, 2010 at 5:04 PM UTC
Fibonacci Series
their bodies,
more suggestion than shape,
stretch then swell,
trailing slime
on sidewalks,
an eternity
of space to cross
from grass to grass.
one,
then another
and another
undefine themselves,
wet antennae testing
air and sun,
shells slung on backs.
calcium calculations curling
ever inward.
Nov 28, 2011
Nov 28, 2011 at 6:03 PM UTC
In your very pure mouth ( god save it )
clanked metal mouthpiece
by cold water in a strange basement
or perhaps even less
Morning doves catapult
leukemia
Astro goth acid wars
White fire black ****** mania
Could we just kiss
right here this September
not have to wake up
or sleep ever again ?
Jan 5, 2012
Jan 5, 2012 at 3:43 AM UTC
~dedicated to the old poets here~
the addictive pairing of certain words, a line,
a lyric, slap-snapping you to full attention,
unfailing decades of instant recognition,
an adrenaline + caffeine shot that powers
a chance, a tensile injection that causes
the lips to commence a new choreography,
the fingers to tap, a jumbled, hurried, embattled
disorderly mess that regenerates, reformulates,
concords into agreement, a harmonic consistency
a geometry of many differing angles that equate
a hard physical, a soft mentality in a singled work,
coexisting in a sacred state of singed confluence,
though imperfect, satisfies mathematical boundaries
of a random outpouring, crowning the stripe inspiring
the spark that finally satisfyingly silences an ignited
filament a-glowing for years, that holy happens
to cross your antennae, fulfilling the need to honor,
the sacred geometry of chance, the honor to need,
the joy of saying, at last, this unwritten debt, paid!
————————————————————————-
(1) a favorite of many years, a lyric from “The Shape of My Heart” by Sting
(2) Dec 3 2020 2:53pm NYC
Dec 3, 2020
Dec 3, 2020 at 2:59 PM UTC
An ant is just an ant my son
An impact it wont make
But a million ants will move the world
A conviction you won’t shake.
An ant is still a living thing
It eats, it breaths, it works
It runs in an environment
Where the hostile spider lurks.
It works in regulation
With a thousand brother ants
To a strict cooperation
That achieves communal stance.
An intelligence is present,
A timetable has been set
This organized endeavor
Makes it’s success an winning bet.
An ant makes love, it rears it’s young
It grooms it’s brother’s hide.
And if enraged an ant will fight
A foe a thousand times it’s size.
It’s glittering antennae
And it’s shiny compound eye
It’s economy of movement
And compulsion to deny
Involvement with any cause
Apart from that one sent
By the Queen Ant’s regulations
At the Ant God’s monument.
I am moved with admiration
For this tiny creatures heart,
It’s commitment to community
And resolve to set apart
All individual aspiration
And selfish action of it’s own.
To gather condiments for nest and Queen
Compelled forever more…to roam.
Marshalg
Mangere Bridge
17th May 2008
Nov 28, 2009
Nov 28, 2009 at 11:53 AM UTC
Where I live, you see, is the future
which nobody saw coming but me,
and I guarantee, its truth,
I consider ants sentient, indeed.
I cringe for my imaginary Jain friends,
I just smashed another dozen scouting sugar ants,
and I sang to them as I did,
hoping their tiny antennae
knew the deal,
we throw ant-edibles in rodent safe containers,
out past the edge
of the motion sensors,
ants of all common sorts are welcome.
- because our fire ants have some how mellowed
- since arriving from Texas
on waves of dread… fire ants,
maybe that kind never got here. any way
- now, we live with them and all the others
- on the edge of the eastern pacific
- super colony that has no war
- on its inner or outer edges.
But one must consider ants
as sapient sentients,
senders of signals, wireless radio,
wee-tiny antennae vibes,
to sing a song ants can translate that says,
This human says: I shall **** all you send to my kitchen.
It is a thought song, you think it, as you ****
You might try it if, you consider
ants are not just pests, but
interesting life tools, for living in dirt
with no screens, lack so obvious it is
noticed by any with attention to antennae
as intense as
that that of Everest Pax, who in April began his sixth year…
Now, who
can hold the ant mind
long enough to imagine the queen,
with Ender-vision?
Through the eyes that watched me **** the scouts,
and signal boundaries to the Queen.
Jun 12, 2021
Jun 12, 2021 at 4:36 PM UTC
Fibonacci Sequence
(after a photograph of snails)
their bodies,
more suggestion than shape,
stretch then swell,
trailing slime
on sidewalks,
an eternity
of space to cross
from grass to grass.
one,
then another
and another
undefine themselves,
wet antennae testing
air and sun,
shells slung on backs.
calcium calculations curling
ever inward.
Apr 28, 2010
Apr 28, 2010 at 5:17 PM UTC
Some playful shrimps clean the octolord's suction cups. One of their antennae buzzes a message up one of his orange tentacles and registers in the Octolord's mind: the silly sun is playing! Another shrimp: what's that sun up to now? The Octolord opened his mighty eyehole lids. The sun! What's...
NOTHING
Mar 5, 2013
Mar 5, 2013 at 6:02 PM UTC
Two strangers in a rickshaw in Varanasi:
Two strangers who never felt like strangers.
Two people lost and alive in the moment,
The same moment
With every sense standing, antennae bristling..
Two in a bubble
Together, held apart.
Caught up in a parade and surrounded by shy , smiling faces
Waving modestly at the fair haired strangers,
Laughing
At their surprise and joy.
Knowing that moment's awe
Delighted to share the festival.
Rickety trucks gaudily decorated blare out the tinny music and
High pitched voices distorted by the tannoy add an urgency
To the motion.
Shimmering saris glisten,
So in tune with the music that trembles with joy.
That joy spills out from the
Scents, the colours, the gleaming grins and the shy waving that marks our welcome,
Till every sense tingles
With life.
And then the sand storm
Swirling and circling the speeding rickshaw
Arrived mysteriously, magically,
Like dry ice in a theatre.
The air now tangible;
Surrounding us like the skin of a bubble
Lifting us out
Of ourselves as the scene comes and goes.
The sand screen clears to reveal
An elephant
A beautiful, smiling elephant
Dressed in splendour
Accompanying us on our magic carpet ride.
Close enough for us to touch his hide.
Bejewelled and glorious
Smiling too
And all is one in that moment
And each looks at the other and feels enchanted and wants the parade to go on forever
Just like this;
With motion
And music
And colour
And smiles
And laughter
And
An elephant.
Sep 14, 2016
Sep 14, 2016 at 4:04 PM UTC
Is it sounds
converging,
Sounds
nearing,
Infringement,
impingement,
Impact,
contact
With surfaces of the sounds
Or surfaces without the sounds:
Diagrams,
skeletal,
strange?
Is it winds
curling round invisible corners?
Polyphony of perfumes?
Antennae discovering an axis,
erecting the architecture of a world?
Is it
orchestration of the finger-tips,
graph of a fugue:
Scaffold for colours:
colour itself being god?
2.4k
A Moth rests on your nose for your solace,
Disoriented by anxious breaths instead.
Still your lungs.
Postpone your life for another’s,
an insect that lives for an average of three days is worth
more than you of eighty years.
It has less time to live and
So is forced to live each nanosecond as its minute.
Hold your breath for a second and give it thousands of moments
To study the purpose of your pores, the nature of your nostrils, the message of your mouth.
It is a blessing that one who has such a blink of a life should choose you.
Its tentative, exploring antennae acknowledge your existence
For that moment
You are its universe.
You
Are the mountains, and underwater caves, the forests, the savannah, the tundra, the planets.
You
Are the suffocating suburbia, the twitchy towns, the neglected neighborhoods, the seductive cities.
You
Are sighing waterfalls, lighthearted hills, free-spirited skies, heartwarming dreams.
If god was the universe,
Then you’re set for heaven.
Except
The Moth flies away
Leaving you to take its place.
Feb 13, 2010
Feb 13, 2010 at 8:59 PM UTC
I see a Woman eating her muffin
looking at Man who is looking
looking into the depths of his paper cup
and the wrinkles and rivers on the back of his hand
thinking When did I get those?
Coffee Cup looking at the blue bin in the corner
Coffee Cup thinking Well, I guess this is how it goes
The secret force that wrenches eyes upward
from the secret morning monologues
happens like electricity happens
and Man sees Woman's eyes and frowns
and can't tell whether they are blue
or brown.
Crumbs are on her lap.
Man doesn't notice but Woman thinks he does
Moving imperceptibly and not wasting a calorie
she flutters her hands over the warm loaves of her thighs.
Man notices an ephemeral strain Simon and Garfunkle and
becomes aware of a softening within his sternum and
electrons slowing, softing, into a May spring aesthetic
Woman rubs her finger which does not have a ring
and Coffee Cup wonders if it will still
have sentience within the bin or if the world
with all its broken beauty and mornings and warm hands
will suddenly just stop everything?
I look at my keys. The sort that express, not
the sort that open doors and drawers
but even these, time to time, will
fall beneath the wooden floors.
Man pulls his long coat off the back of his chair
without ceremony rises and turns to go
leaves his cup on the table for a coffee girl to attend to
and exits as the rain turns to snow.
Woman sits. And sits.
Woman might order another pumpkin muffin.
Her knees are chilled, watching her pinkly from the edge
of a pencil skirt like children's faces from a blanket.
A moment later she makes that same comparison
and laughs internally without gesture or sound.
And Woman looks around.
Woman smiles. Not because of Man or muffin
or the secret life of a Coffee Cup
but because she is Woman
struck lively by the sudden meta
fleeting passage of The Bigger
and her eyes, definitively brown
spark like bumper car antennae
and struck by magic, the same magic electricity
for an irreversible instant meet mine.
And for one fourteenth of a moment
Woman knows Me with all her life.
I shiver and she lobs me the red bean bag
and I hold the image in my mind like
a relic of the living divine.
The Bigger, the morning
the secret was mine.
Oct 22, 2012
Oct 22, 2012 at 11:44 AM UTC
Floodlights.
They’re ghosts right?
From our memories,
Have been seized, we
From the perfect dream?
Drip drop drip drop
Turning tricks, dropped the jack
***** when you coming back?
It’s off it’s off
Seldom silence serves as sight’s severance.
**** chop **** chop OW!
******* pistol clock
Whip glock whipping ****
How many names can you think of for a knockoff
Of soda pop?
I’m sorry sir you’ve got the wrong Ryan,
I haven’t starred in any movies that cryin’
Old seniles, and sensitive females, so honestly claim
Was the way life should have been for them.
Oh in that case I’ll show you the brain,
Then kick you in the *** for being so gay.
Hold on there, wrong Ryan.
I ain’t waiting tables, or banefully fryin’
Up **** that I spit in for women with tips worth less
Than my two cents.
Oh I apologize, celebrity lookalike.
Must be the weather or the windshield is cracked
Or the antennae are bent or the cables are jacked
But I can’t seem to figure out just who you are
When I’m watching the TV pimped into my car,
Let’s try a few shall we
Not a cook…Not a lover boi…Silence of the…Birds, if you’re a bird I’m a…Bat…Batman! Batman and Robin! Red Robin! No not a waiter…
Red hearse, Fred Durst, Paris Hilton, Ryan Milton
Wrong Ryan, Wrong Ryan!
Oh my god, silly me
I seem to have gone on a tangent you see.
Tandem bicycles, all of them for free.
If you would only come visit. Agreed?
Of course I know that you’re THE Ryan B.
Jan 23, 2012
Jan 23, 2012 at 9:04 PM UTC
My hair is a mess of antennae-
Each piece picks up static of days
dead and gone.
I run through the noise with unmanned hands- feeling the weight of each lock.
Where’s the golden child?
The girl with a head full of health?
Of ringlets
yet to be devoured by time, sweat and dissonance.
As I drift I hear the voice of my mother fading- her chord was cut and motioned off-air in the wake of new administration.
Memories trapped in the roots of straightened strands. Her signal comes through as a muffled cry:
“These ends may be swept away,
but my music will still play
through your stereo.”
Jun 21, 2023
Jun 21, 2023 at 3:05 PM UTC
The caterpillar marches
Munching from leaf to leaf to leaf
He doesn’t know where he’s going
He doesn’t know where he’s been
He only knows the munching
The hunger in his gut
The fire in his belly
Antennae pointing up
Vigilant for predators
Water and leaves
He doesn’t know where he’s going
It matters not where he’s been
The caterpillar weaves
Instinctively without knowing
Why he must, but weaves he does
A cocoon for the growing
The caterpillar digests himself
Dissolving into soup
Becoming a pod of pain and tears
And caterpillar goop
Alone for weeks he suffers
Reconfiguring
His whole body becoming
A new kind of being
No idea what he’s becoming
No idea what’s in store
Suddenly caterpillar emerges
More beautiful than before
Stronger and more delicate
Lighter than the air
Ready for love and lofty height
A sight beautiful and rare
The butterfly does not look back
To the caterpillar he was
The butterfly flies forward
Embracing whatever comes
Aug 29, 2023
Aug 29, 2023 at 12:32 PM UTC
he is pulling snails from my petticoat
making sure their antennae do not grow
and left feeling such as candlewax,
flesh walls seep from under their
pulsing bottoms, the apex of one head
and I am the girl it is given to, a gift
******* at my breast –
how uncomfortable to be the center of
such longing, being touched and
fingered with when something does
not belong into your body’s crevices
pressing, oh, like candlewax –
I know he removes them because he
loves, but I want them to stay
because they love me just as much,
dyed pink against my body, snail hugs.
Dec 1, 2012
Dec 1, 2012 at 5:34 PM UTC
reach out ye white antler antennae
up to the succulent sky
tree teach me how to always be
growing, spreading finger branches high
teach me roots
teach me the hidden why
of the fruit of not every leaving
is to die, tree
reach out ye white antler antennae
and blossom me into life
Apr 26, 2021
Apr 26, 2021 at 8:56 AM UTC
Josteen Yazzi said the Critic should ask his thought
on the matter of great art and literature
What do you know of art and literature, Uncle?
Nothing, he said, I think about what I do not know.
I do not know why people don't like Norman Rockwell.
Norman Rockwell painted the American Dream,
with Indians in it, some times.
I like Norman Rockwell because I know how he felt.
I saw my people live in a good world that vanished.
Magic or other wise, I remember mine,
the way
when I see
Mr. Rockwell's America as he imagined
he had seen it.
Or maybe he painted
what you should have been able to see,
but for wars and Spanish Flu and cattle barons
and reaping machines and steam and electricity.
Olaf Wieghorst coulda painted America ugly, too.
But he didn't.
Literature. I have nothing left to say, Norman Rockwell, maybe he needed a mentioning for some
reader anchored reason.
We have to deal with that more these days.
People with big old dish antennae out there,
rusting after Direct TV got a satellite to see the res,
Some o'the kids build a radio telescope, outa them three meter models,
so we are connected.
Norman Rockwell painted the Peaceful Kingdom,
just like Mr. Hicks and Mr. Kincaid,
not mr klee or mr picaso, they could image hell.
My ma liked That drippy guy, said she could see the swing of things in he's paintings, What's-isname,
Jackson, damshame, Jackson Pollak right?
but the message is in the medium, that's what my Shicheii yoosto say. Art must sing.
So I can play my drum. And she can dance.
When we think nothing about it.
Nov 6, 2018
Nov 6, 2018 at 8:45 PM UTC
Rachel Ray is speaking.
The room in which he lays, passed out, continues on without his permission. Dead moths feather down from the less-than-steady window unit. A cockroach delights in the cabinet. The peanut butter the man swore he wouldn't touch, on account of his lack of self-discipline, self-denial, self-awareness--maybe just self--is not sealed, the lid at an acute angle, the cockroach rubbing its antennae together.
Gluten-free fish fry with a modern, chic potato salad, Rachel Ray says.
Easy to make on a work night or after the kids get out of soccer practice.
I like easy. Do you like easy? What about fast? That's what I thought.
The power flickers as the power always does when someone on the first floor of the apartment building starts a load of laundry. The man does not stir; he dreams.
But more than that, more weighty a subject than one two three lovers or falling from heaven, the muck of common dreams, submerges the dreamer.
The scene is this: The man is a boy again, three years younger than his waking self. He is in military file with boys his age. It is raining; it is night, the sky a starless miasma of electric blue.
There are men, old men, flat-topped and heavy-browed, walking the rows, handing out hammers. The dreamer receives his.
Now, a man the dreamer knows--just knows--to be the general says, lift up your hammers. On the count of three you will strike the boy in front of you. If you should survive, congratulations. You're now a man. If you shouldn't, we say thank you and goodbye.
One, the general says.
The dreamer does not lift his hammer. Won't lift his hammer.
Two, the general says.
In anticipation of three, boys start striking, skulls fracture, an odd harmony rides the air, hundreds of arms bringing down hundreds of hammers, hundreds of minds punctured, spilling hundreds of future glories and failures.
The dreamer still stands, hammer to his side. His peers groan at his feet. He is alone.
The general, taking long, purposeful strides, approaches the dreamer. He, the general, lifts the hammer in his hand, and with a singular word, three, strikes the dreamer in the forehead.
And it's just as simple as that, Rachel Ray says, presenting the boiled potatoes, baptized in mustard and vinegar, topped beautifully with celery and finely chopped shallots. Now back to our fish.
Jul 15, 2014
Jul 15, 2014 at 12:33 AM UTC
Mid-spring, skinny, black, blind
eastern tent caterpillars -
Malacosoma americanum -
falling from the cherry tree
leaning, human, over our deck.
Irksome. Mash and kick
them with my feet, continue
practicing or reading.
Three weeks later, reading
late at night. Heavy-bodied
black-eyed, reflexed antennae -
many hundreds of moths
crave the lamplight, some attaining
extinction through cracks
around the window screen. Vexing.
Until next morning, I look
up the name that has eluded me
all spring and early summer.
The single-minded moth and larval colony -
one small monophony.
Aug 10, 2015
Aug 10, 2015 at 8:00 AM UTC
One leaves his leaves at home
beomg a mullen and sends up a lighthouse
to peer from: I will have my way,
yellow—A mast with a lantern, ten
fifty, a hundred, smaller and smaller
as they grow more—Liar, liar, liar!
You come from her! I can smell djer-kiss
on your clothes. Ha! you come to me,
you, I am a point of dew on a grass-stem.
Why are you sending heat down on me
from your lantern?—You are cowdung, a
dead stick with the bark off. She is
squirting on us both. She has has her
hand on you!—well?—She has defiled
ME.—Your leaves are dull, thick
and hairy.—Every hair on my body will
hold you off from me. You are a
dungcake, birdlime on a fencerail.—
I love you, straight, yellow
finger of God pointing to—her!
Liar, broken **** dungcake, you have—
I am a cricket waving his antennae
and you are high, grey and straight. Ha!
1.5k
"a mecha bug
impossibly small
beady compound eye
cute little botfl y antennae
recording Me
sleepyhead
as I lay down
in my bed
embedding its little body
in my dreamcloud that's
above my head
in my bed
all my prayers + wishes
all my luck gifts from God
the robo-pede
uploads it's buzz code
And the scheiße repeats
tonight then tomorrow,
1 then 2,
2night then 2morrow
one then two
Nov 29, 2012
Nov 29, 2012 at 12:20 AM UTC