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Matt Cardinal Feb 2015
Skipping rocks on quicksand
covering my empire of dominos
that only fell for girls
with a general knowledge of obscure trivia:
an empire where Latin is a phoenix
rising from Ash Wednesday
for a fourth-quarter comeback
reunion Tour de France,
where the truth costs less than
**** jokes in bulk at Costco.

All this while I wait for christ
who cringes through crazy eights
with cards collected by Captain Crunch
from birthdays past.

I'd stop skipping rocks and appointments
if being swallowed
scared me like shoehorns
being anyone's weapon of choice
or the doctor's orders
including an extra fork for sharing dessert
but mainly the obsolete
laser for fixing Everything
hidden somewhere in a lab
coat worn by a wicked *****.
Mark Armstrong Jun 2018
Mother Nature is a nihilist sitting with friends
Around a poker table in the dew drop inn
Playing Nasty Canasta and the loser draws a limb
On a voodoo hangman, the cut of her kin

The high-wire committee say she’s way out of line
So they’ve sent in a crack-team of their most earnest faces
To blow 40 shades of blue, red and lime
From the very corridors our Mother paces

She croaks through the smoke “the first sons a novelty
The rest are just relics of muscles unclenched
Too smart for their own good and that doesn’t bother-me
But the reaper is hungry and hustling for rent”

Lackeys line the lawn, flunkies on fleek
To cover the crack of her chunky cheeks
“To stake lives may well seem immoral and bleak
But to play for cash prize seems horribly cheap
For a Lady of her esteem”

But the crowd spoke, she hung up the wardens trunchbull
Left the skeleton key within reach of the cells
“They’ve aired their opinions and I’ve had a ****-full
Let the hungry ******* impeach themselves
I’m sitting this one out”

“And I’ll  hide, while my dead snake wriggle persists,
On Elba with hairy pits, freckled wrists,
Openly practicing romanticists
And other hapless things that can’t exist
In these times”

Every second Sunday, the search resumes-led
By a dawn-chorus of confetti festooned-plebs
She can dance the devils limbo cos she’ll not be presumed-dead
While we’ve Holy Grail Package Holi-vows to renew-said
The green eyed usher on the door

The newsstand screams “Mother Nature was a fascist
Sher natural selection was the **** manifesto”
And they’re pedalling placebo to the shell-shocked masses
While the editor shoehorns a scotch into his amaretto

Yeah the world has been orphaned and the orphans smothered
But go easy on her sordid soul cos that’s  our mother, after all
Not to be read as any kind of statement but as a batshit bedtime story for overgrown kids

— The End —