"fungal" poems
When his eyes first fell upon her
She was choosing avocados
In the fruit and vegetable aisle.
And he watched how her thumbs lingered
On the base of the alligator pear
And pressed, maternally.
He feigned interest in the cabbages
Whilst sensing her delicate architecture
Through his peripheral gaze.
He thought that somewhere,
In real or imaginary life,
They would soon bathe together.
And when they did,
They soaked for years in secrets,
Details suffusing through their lips and arms,
Water-hole satisfaction and moonlit deserts
To make them feel they might have transcended cabbages
And be pervading a rhapsodic realm
They forgot their friends watching in greenery,
Subsumed by each-other,
They felt no need
To live in a world of relativity and apples.
Their love-traced sphere tightened around them,
Until it ****** at the edges of their skin
And wailed when they parted.
Tighter it grew, elastic dug into their humid thighs
Contorting their once harmonic bodies
That used to fit like crosswords.
And they each became ugly to the other
As the seconds ingested their perfection
And they bickered like flailing urchins
In a deep sea soiled darkness.
Decisions were made and paroxysms detonated
And they were taken back by their
Fungal friends with tissue offerings
And ethanol.
Time passed, and memories were binned
Periodically on tuesdays
Until neither knew the other
And they would pass in the supermarket
With no more than a quickened gait
And a silent thud in each ribcage.
But neither could buy avocados.
Nov 16, 2011
Nov 16, 2011 at 12:18 PM UTC
I know I've been there,
I've given into death and altered the fabric of reality
Every day we waste away transfixed by flattened images
Of the limitlessness of death
Coupled with elusive, Luciferian harm which will befall us all
Who subsist on the manipulated reality of the hyperspace information field
But one day, enlivened by the festivities of Shakori Hills
And the fungal spirits who awoke beside us
I walked the irreversible pathway through oblivion
Facing cruel destruction and terror
For a horrifying passage across Styx into eternity
And emerged within a crowd of mollusks dancing to the waves of a musical sea
All time suspended in the impossibly drawn-out ****** of the
Archetypal wizardry of rhythm,
The swirling clumps of faces in
Unshakable ecstasy
And seemingly responding to the wild currents of my conscious thought;
A longing for human touch drew the others closer and closer around me
Till they began brushing against me
Bumping into me,
The flow of the crowd saw its axis at my psychic emanation
As once more the last song of all time began with thunderous energy and applause.
I escaped the arresting confines of the crowd
By willing them aside, wearing, as I suddenly became aware, the shoes of Moses
And seeing my muddy feet upon the sands of Egypt
But I yet had no understanding
Of the nature of the garden of earthly delights
Into which I had fallen,
And fear began to envelop me,
Producing law enforcement officials hawklike swooping in to limit my power.
I had but to let go of my acceptance of their power over me to transcend them
But fear tethered me to reality,
Even as I saw about me a Dharmic mandala
Of my past present and future,
Generating inexplicable archetypes around me in a manner profoundly defiant
Of rational logic.
Synchronicity compounded upon me
As the Christos within me
Brought rain down upon us
Forcing us together and leaving me in dumbfounded reverie
Of all that had transpired to bring this moment forth
What had seemed to be the end of history was in fact
The awakening of a new rebirth
The first moment of coming to be
The union of past, present and future
As the reassuring smiles of my trustworthy disciples gently allowed me passage back into a rational existence
I beamed in utter gratitude for the eternal life which Christ afforded us.
Chaos had subsided back into normalcy
But still winked at me
In telepathic coincidence.
My soul has begun to realize that it resides in all things
Soon they are to be reintegrated
Nov 22, 2012
Nov 22, 2012 at 10:16 PM UTC
A ripened sky splits and bleeds
Mangled reds and blacks;
An instant melts as heat from
Clustered newborn suns --
Blistered from the wounds --
Collects and beams 1600 feet
Earthwards from Fat Man's
Plump and pompous underbelly.
The pure-light pin-prick stopped
The city's pulse for a moment;
Collecting remnants of the
Beating hearts (of artists,
Doctors, students, parents,
Preachers, rats, and peasants)
To plant on rotting soil -
A hellish fungal pustule.
The swelling abscess breathed
But once and burst to
Ripple excess outwards
Soaking up the landscape;
Ingesting miles and spewing
Spores towards septic skies to form
A mass of mushroomed
Might and pyrrhic triumph.
May 27, 2015
May 27, 2015 at 11:21 AM UTC
He heard a last echoed clink of liquor-laden ice-cubes,
Stuck between two stools that screamed for company,
I gazed across his vacant stare to the barman –the silent DJ,
Professionally ignorant as I gestured my hoarse thirst,
I waited a little minute, another minute an’ just one more,
Enter our businessman, full-schedule, long-hauled to drink,
With a rib-eye steak of a face an’ breath surely barbecued,
Two satisfied cheeks, pink-puffed with brows fit for burial,
Teeth ground with tension but brighter than the lighting
A fungal-lung nose perched upon a smile that I could smell,
He plumbed himself wet-shave close to my stiffened neck,
“..Hana Drink..?” (Silence) best to follow the DJ’s example,
(Bullish huffs) (Lips licked) “.. Ya’ll wantin’ a drink, Mister?..”
Flustered by the company, I replied “..Non, Je think eh Je chi..”
A retort of sorts, faux languages not my degree, “..Leaba..Bed!”
Spluttered just at the end – an insulting first impression,
He seemed nervously joyous, loosened from being himself,
Yet his trouser belt buckled, pulled tight to conversation level,
An’ Redwood-trunk hands, alive with the latest deal struck,
“..Bedtime for us..” he bare-bawled, splitting my weary eyes,
His numbed arm clumsily flung around me, “..bedtime for us!..”,
DJ unmuted, the music paused, I mouthed softly “..just the bill..”
(Silence)
“..Who’s Bill?.. a friend?…Is he cute?.. So this drink?” I panic still.
Dec 30, 2013
Dec 30, 2013 at 11:15 AM UTC
U for Unilateralis Cordyceps. The fungus enters an ant's body through its respiration. It invades it's brain and changes how it perceives smell, because ants do everything they do from their smell of pheromones, right? So this microscopic little fungal spore, then makes the ant climb up the stem of a plant and bite hard on a leaf, with an abnormal force. The fungus then kills the ant, and continues to grow, leaving the ant's exoskeleton intact. So, a small fungus drives an ant around as a vehicle, uses it as food and shelter and then as the ultimate monument to itself. And when the fungus is ready to reproduce, its fruiting bodies grow from the ant's head and rupture releasing the spores, letting the wind carry them to more unsuspecting food. There, our entire idea of free will down the bin.
One single small fungus spore does that to an ant. You have trillions of bacteria in your body. How do you know where you end, and where your environment begins.
We invent God, soul... heaven, afterlife...even life-imitating technology, all sorts of transcendence to cope with the idea of an absolute end. And then, we die for an idea that promises us some sort of immortality.
May 2, 2014
May 2, 2014 at 4:00 AM UTC
She cried,
Oh, how she wept,
When she heard of the frogs who had died,
Of the deadly, fungal disease
which had already reached so wide
Only 8,
but she loved frogs,
like she loved herself,
Said she didn't want to wait,
til Heaven,
didn't want to live without them
It was hours before her tears would abate,
and days before she believed,
she hadn't been born too late.
Oct 14, 2014
Oct 14, 2014 at 11:22 AM UTC
here the grass look up brunette trunks, branched arms flex their
form is calm, spindly fingers bloom their open palms
there they reach for spreading clouds
encapsulated sounds of gentle leaves, green noise
orange hues through cherry waves of grape and lemon, sweetened
pecks of the sun set in amber—morsels of melody, snipped bits of
things in canon
contrapuntal
sprouting airgerms
fugal, fungal
Aug 23, 2014
Aug 23, 2014 at 5:54 AM UTC
Time turns to liquid, rolling off my tongue like molasses
dripping technicolor drool, viewed through fungal lenses.
Jun 14, 2016
Jun 14, 2016 at 5:12 PM UTC
The burrito came outta the fridge
armed with shards from it's plate
trying to slice up my throat
good food, that's no longer great
The tomatoes decided to join the revolt
squirting acid into my eyes
I scrambled for the kitchen knives
hoping, if I stabbed them, they'd finally die
That week old Chinese a mistake
the noodles fungal and ripe
gotten from a shady out take
yes, a bad stereotype
I've feared for my skin before
as life is dangerous too
but opening my fridgerator's door
my food turning obnoxious, and blue
Oct 6, 2018
Oct 6, 2018 at 8:34 AM UTC
Part I
The fragile, forgotten arctic perseveres; the white snowy tundra wrapped in a blanket of darkness.
The buried threads of memory under hardened, ice plastered arctic waters.
Why always to be submerged? Can you feel the freezing?
As if only icebergs can gather the brine of the ocean to itself and never let go.
What does not return fungal and muddy in more corporeal climes travels toward the poles.
Is there an alternative to ice bound quiescence?
As if what has passed to the extremities of mind is not forever lost.
And so I follow the leads, swimming in the cracks of what forgetting has not claimed.
Will even these channels soon freeze over?
As life travels northward intent on testing the conditions of existence.
Part II
Under an icy sheet of polar sky; fissures of light weeping through an immovable, immeasurable surface.
The strongest force in the universe embeds the foundation of our undulating, fractured lives.
Does that which holds us together also keep us apart?
As light is held in tension between being and becoming, revealing and altering.
Our wavering hearts like solitary planets seek orbit around a suitable center.
Do we choose the star which gives light to our days?
As our gravity reels, heedlessly casting for moons or meteors in passage.
And so the hushed wall spreads a river of blazing reds and somber greens.
Do the gaps in our comprehension expand imagination or despair?
As memory embeds each frozen expanse, touching where the horizon unfolds.
Aug 20, 2013
Aug 20, 2013 at 9:31 AM UTC
May the furnace burn us
So that we might rise from crash's ashes
Like the Phoenix as Felix
Pounds out a bravado sonata
Something brash and passionate
Like abstract fashion it
Causes conundrums among tongues
Flapping, rolling, lapping, growing
Synaptic tactics mapping spastic
Canals through the fungal jungles
Of minds melting from psilosybin I been
Growing dendrites as my pen writes
Reaching Zen heights while the men fight.
Sep 3, 2012
Sep 3, 2012 at 5:06 PM UTC
Skyscrapers jut towards the heavens
middle fingers to Mother Nature
or sun-bleached white ribs of some poor beast
who tangoed with a toyota
and lost.
The stench that wafts through the streets could easily strip paint
but the locals don't seem to mind.
They march through their mundane Mondays
like maggots in goose-step.
The cacophony of their carrion communion is grisly and deafening.
Garish billboards burn
obscene advertisements onto assaulted retinas.
Street salesmen descend upon naive tourists
like vultures after fresh meat.
Policemen **** and pillage
what they were sworn to protect and serve,
and the Mayor's fungal tendrils
reach deep into the criminal underbelly of his city.
The voracious human hunger for wealth
knows no boundaries.
The grey-on-grey urban tragedy that is this concrete corpse
is always changing. Growing. Advancing.
however, it is not without waste.
Abandoned asphalt arteries stretch as far as the eye can see.
Somewhere, in a derelict parking lot, a flower is blooming.
We may spit in the face of Mother Nature
with every tree we cut and river we dam,
but soon she will be the one laughing
over our shattered
concrete
corpses.
Dec 16, 2013
Dec 16, 2013 at 10:01 PM UTC
The wet lichen
and I
sit upon the dew-slicked
outcrop of boulder bits -
both preternaturally verdure
Each seeking solace in the
space
each seeking what we need from
air
Inclined to commune here, both
'til
the sunrays fade-
my companion soaking sun from
without
and I, I seek a subtler, silent
inner light
We two ourselves
had thought perhaps
to sitstill alone
here
And having found (of course,
of course) a fellow
sit-seeker here
changed course (of course)
and sat astride this
same (but not for long,
only for long) stone
What'd've been an I
(grumble,sigh)
was now a we you see
and I, as well was never
only I but, rather I
as I'd not yet known
and my body and its songs
The lichen too
composed
of two
sat as seeming One
but was as much
a fibrous mesh of fungal
strands sit-seeking
along with its
(not hosted but self-same self)
algal (not plant, not animal; not
either, not both) or cyanobacterial
bits of cells and life material
So together, apart and as much
as One
we looked down
in late-October dawn
into the pond
(to see the sun's rise and blush)
and each and both of us
hoped then to find and feel our Light
Then, through the rising
warm mists,
I sought the Sky -
cloud-filled with cattails’ tufts
and there at last
(of course)
through the irreal fog
(annihilated obnubilation)
I saw the fog
and clouds as One
We two, too
were One.
Oct 26, 2018
Oct 26, 2018 at 7:14 PM UTC
listen to them wingmongers
circling round
squawking about how
there be tiny cities on the ground
moss barble asphalt
laid down
betwixt twig-mud megatowers
architecture of invisible sound
leaves decomposing, ants scurrying
spider weaving her web,
connecting flowers like power
lines buzzing beetles hurrying
all the way down the naturebound
highway,
off-ramps to the nine burrows
past the dead squirrel,
through the downpour
of fungal spores more
self-sustainable than any city of yours,
screech the wingmongers,
and from dirt level
i understand their song
these tiny cities will be
long past
when our civilization's long gone
Apr 28, 2021
Apr 28, 2021 at 7:21 PM UTC
you touched your wrists
to mine
and a rash blossomed
across my skin
red and dry
ran across
indigo hills
fields of turned-over soil
in the night-time
to cool my
strangled sweat
to find a sink
a light in the kitchen.
im sorry, i promise
i'll buy a slice
i just need to use your sink, please.
fluorescent-white
heat
i put the water on the hottest setting
and i scrub and
scrub, and scrub
fast, and hard
i rinse the raw
i leave.
when I wake up
for all my scrubbing
the rippling rash, the buds
are still there
under my skin.
a lone fungal stalk
of crimson
a fruiting body
rises from my wrist.
this does not belong
here
like a broken bone
bending in the wrong direction
under the skin
like the voice on
the other end of the line
this is not real
Oct 21, 2015
Oct 21, 2015 at 11:27 PM UTC
Sleepy September rain
pretending life isn't busy
Standing still on slippery edge
Taking in foggy city view
Of little senators and harpies
Playing house of cards
All so quiet up here
On newly constructed condo roof
Little ant people climbing up
Towards the light with fungal parasites
protruding from wet open wounds
Sep 13, 2014
Sep 13, 2014 at 2:59 PM UTC
Unaware of the blood that runs through the cracks, among the withered corpses that lay beneath them
Denial is a foul drug, it is not mended by intervention, it isn’t removed by honesty
It is expediated by horror, it is exorcised by the blood drenched enlighenment
For honesty doesn’t cure it anymore, denial has evolved beyond the scope of reason
It has grown legs, it speaks as it pleases, it preaches as it pleases
It gains power and leads the ill informed to become its pawns
It is a mighty sick creature, a disgusting ooze that seeps into the minds of the unlucky
Denial is a fungal disease, it spreads its spores to all human life
It is chaos, and seeks to destroy
This is the way of denial
And ****** to those that help denial, for they become the sickness as well
May 5, 2015
May 5, 2015 at 3:25 PM UTC
A home of fallen dreams
and wishes made upon dead stars
of feathers and fungal dreams
brushing gently your tendril wings
rearranging your wisps of hair
like ghostly fingers
in thin air
Jan 3, 2017
Jan 3, 2017 at 8:14 PM UTC
I went to the Dr's for an injection
To clear both my feet of fungal infection
He first had a look and made the detection
That four of my toes needed correction
But whilst he was there I made the connection
This Dr was showing unusual affection
He ****** on a toe with no disinfection
But regretted it later on further reflection
Jan 3, 2013
Jan 3, 2013 at 8:42 AM UTC
The simple leaf displays her complexity with utmost transparency, whilst beautiful chords convey a rhythm which is beyond the parameters of articulation.
A droplet of dew can generate a deep sense of perspective in the South Eastern gardens of Saxony, where uncertainty droops her head with daily lamentations and the quest for connectedness.
Is it possible for us to be at one now?
Let us give credence to ancient runes, as we are wanting in our understanding of pagan orchards.
Every picture tells a story under a forest canopy, where stagecoaches compete against highwaymen of contemporary political propaganda.
Numerology is depicted in your iris.
Grow your plants, and we will engage at an opportune time, with wise insights.
Semantics are inadequate to define familial bonds.
Dec 17, 2014
Dec 17, 2014 at 12:33 AM UTC
We’re all friends
By miracle, so soon
Comrades by the break of dawn
And strangers by noon,
As sure as the seasons
And predictable like rain
You can watch it with certainty
As a waxing moon wanes.
And when they’re gone
Entreaties refused to deign
--Like you’re an ugly growth
Or some fungal pain—
Then acknowledge a scale tipped
And gifts, given and got
The fair trade or
Reciprocation that it is not.
And how sad, and self-prophesied
The nature of ‘friend’
It teaches us that what begins
Is surely bound to end.
Jan 6, 2014
Jan 6, 2014 at 9:59 PM UTC
Ezra clamber’d o’er the crest
to seek the way which he knew best
which, passing by the yellow tares
and turning at a grove of pears
set him at ancient fungal oak
where upon a branch he hung his cloak
For on some odd-nights within his mare
declared a warlock and his maiden fair:
“Spindled by the peary copse
after fields of shammy crops
stands that vile toady oak
shading torpid mystic folk
“Percieveth thee the one with warty beak?
‘Tis to him whom you must speak.
Rouse him from his slumber, Ezra,
pray of him your task."
The wizard with the moley snout
reclining with a snoozy pout
snored upward from that moldy bark
and whispered “yonder peasant, hark!
“Ezra, deary, there’s a bane
The shepherds hold in some disdain
for sheps can’t herd bereft of sheep
and this bane ingests them in their sleep.
Do strap on hip your faithful blade
and into swampy depths do wade
so to provoke this shepherd's foe
and smite him lifeless head to toe.”
Aug 19, 2014
Aug 19, 2014 at 2:32 AM UTC
Pounding heads and churning guts lie
next to me on an old quilt under fleece
Still stuffy air enters heavy lungs and leaves
Coming over the hill behind the sea
was an overwhelming sight to see
Endless gray intersecting with sky
reflecting backward and forwards
where perspective meets the eye
Rotted plankwood will lead to demise
executed by jagged shore rock and waves
carrying one away to the ephemeral light
bobbing below the surface that fades
Out with the old days to make room for new,
recounting last year’s glaze
Remembering like it was yesterday
how sick you’d gotten so soon
A tender heart I’ll always have,
and an old, nurturing soul, too
Awakened by life with fresh eyes,
stimulating a walk to take with you
Dec 9, 2016
Dec 9, 2016 at 11:18 AM UTC
ingredients were chopped
cleanly, neatly
with care
cutting tools were pre-sterilized
and pre-packaged
then wiped clean after use
he arrived in blue scrubs
and donned blue nitrile gloves
for mutual protection
it had been a while for her
her nails were long
she sat in an easy chair
with her feet up on an ottoman
a towel was spread before he began
to make clean up easier
the scent of an alcohol wipe
wafted as he worked
little did he know
we would finish what he started
after he left we gathered up the clippings
thick and fungal
we put them in a *** to boil
with sautéed celery, onions and seasonings
salt and pepper to taste
hmmmmm...delicious, home made
toe nail soup!
Dec 7, 2011
Dec 7, 2011 at 1:42 PM UTC