Soup and greens,beer and tea
buttlerfly young just love me,
aphid trap and liquid feed
ladybird heaven,yes indeed!
I love phosphate & nitrate soil
such versatility reduces toil,
my leaves quicken the compost
all this for free,at no cost!
Okay,okay,yes I sting
there’s a problem with faith.
Yes, I’ve seen mothers with interlaced fingers
& optimistic minds will god into
sick children.
Faith firm as cinderblocks,
building retaining walls against floods
of adversity.
Yet, I’ve seen fathers with frayed hair
& sweat-stained shirts fall
broken, like bone china
to the weight
of brackish, ebon water.
The duality of faith,
cinderblock strong, tea cup thin
leaves me with more questions
than answers.
So I’ve stopped looking at others for proof.
I see god in the bright orange
webbed feet of the ducks on Lake Mission,
kicking with ferocity at unyielding water.
I see god in the grapevine, each aphid praying.
I see god in the stomach of every mother possum,
children clinging to her back
& have to believe they’re all made
of concrete, but
She eyed open like a broken mirror.
Her mother claimed
that her legs were bowed
so that she could catch the moon
between her black knees on moonless nights.
Tiny mandibles chewed her leather tongue
until it was as thin as a razor edged rapier.
it was her beef jerky meditations
that kept her words fibrous and tactile.
I married Ladybug inside a bottle
of sweet yellow Merlot
(we were stuck and sticky
in the last drops of a licking love).
She wore a red spotted dress
and her shoes were pincer bright.
I flagrantly fought her to a standstill
in my usual green camouflage.
Her father chased me for days
for I had stolen her hard shell-like mind;
he never caught me
though he did put a spell inside my head,
a Catholic chain-mailed spell
that bound me to her hard carapace
as if I were an aphid -
a gummy mouthed aphid
that could only hitch a ride
strapped to her ever searching hunger.
The night ended in smoke.
Sleepwalking fumes
rolled over the park,
perambulated in groggy circles,
then got stuck in the tree branches
where they hung as thick
as melting duck fat.
Around eleven in the morning
the sky began to baste itself;
you could smell it simmering
on the edge of a backburning brink
as it grilled a too torpid air.
It was sweet in the mouth at first
then it fire-licked wet ears
and slippery toes.
Skeletal strings unwound.
Mind-sweat began to pour,
drowning-out hope of any ease,
thoughts flopped to the earth
stewing amid overheated bubbles,
Microbes leached through
oily eyebrows.
Ohio just can’t get its weather right;
some nights merely pre-heat the day,
daylight pants through aphid snouts
and brown stems,
or bulges lungs with its ballooning fevers.
if the next passer-by
gleefully remarks:
‘what a lovely day’
they will be cursed politely
with a gorgon stare,
then a thin, and crispy leer.
Political standards are falling
To a point some say is appalling
The Elephant said:
"You've got to wear red
And knock on their door, "Aphid calling"!
The Big Crunch Hypothesis
in times past it all had felt so distant
I was an aphid in an unkempt garden of eden
and my eyes, they were far too dim, too weak
and the view was far too vibrant
and the stars,
however bright they glistened,
resided light years away
and the oceans, though they beckoned
had seemed far too deep to swim
and my world was so astoundingly vast
and I
was so incredibly small
and then...
as if in the time it takes to exhale...
the all expansive universe retracted like elastic
a shimmering haze of the Milky Way now shrouds my city like a fog
and in the morning I brush the comets from my hair
the sun, once so divinely elusive
serves as a lamp on my bedside table
Saturn’s miraculous rings adorn my hands and decorate my ears
and the Earth?
my whole world in its entirety
exists suspended amidst the freckles on your cheek
Bouquets of eastern starlings, raving.
Reaching out, fledgling saving,
The garden sloth of heaven's hues
Living in a bath of saffron dews.
Darkend the plough that snails follow
With troughs behind it tumbling hollow;
And up the steepend crag it crowns,
Margined off by aphid sundowns.
Violent garden of solar grapes,
some day we will barrel your shapes,
And your gentle filligree reigns retake-
Still cold before the Heavens's gate.
After death, mother's wake,
Finds her hatchling in the lake,
In the mud its last breath take.
Let these sail-white bones
Forever sate
Mother earth's gentle wheat.
i was a child, pushing aphids into and popping them under my fingernails, letting their green corpses gather like dirt before sucking my fingertips clean.
my mother caught me and slapped my hands away from my mouth with a disgusted grunt.
i felt embarassed but acted ashamed, continuing my compulsion in secret; then, in two decades' time, i became an aphid.
Today I picked the garden fruit,
To make complete a tasty meal;
And came across an aphid brute.
Today I picked the garden fruit,
Beside my house of holes and root;
To emphasis my scalloped veal.
Today I picked the garden fruit;
To make complete a tasty meal.
I cleared the vines of ripened crop,
Then freed my back from painful stoop;
And took inside to finely chop.
I cleared the vines of ripened crop,
To later make some veggie soup;
And then I’ll go to bed and drop.
I cleared the vines of ripened crop;
Then freed my back from painful stoop.
Copyright © 2013 By Caryl S. Muzzey
First Place Winner ~ "Triolet" Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Giorgio Veneto
Sept. 4, 2013
The evil Black Widow hatched a wicked plan.
Using a willy worm for weather control,
she could crush the ants empire in her hand.
Just by sending flooding rain and freezing snow.
The Empire of the Ants heard of her plan,
and ordered Soldier B123 to arms.
He took a trained Beetle to be his shield man,
together they marched out past the aphid farms.
Soon they arrived at the Black Widows abode,
and she strummed her web hard, to cause them to flee.
The Soldier grabbed her, and on her back he rode,
while the trained Beetle set the willy worm free.
The Black Widow slipped through a hole in the wall.
Soldier and Beetle stand ready for the call.
Soup and greens,beer and tea
buttlerfly young just love me,
aphid trap and liquid feed
ladybird heaven,yes indeed!
I love phosphate & nitrate soil
such versatility reduces toil,
my leaves quicken the compost
all this for free,at no cost!
Okay,okay,yes I sting
but for you its win,win,win!
,
Tribute to the utrica dioica
Jabberwocky Redux
After reading too much Aquinas
Would an aphid reside in an onager’s ear
if the onager’s master spoke Twi?
Or a Gascony scop with a leper elope
if a civet leapt out of a tree?
You doubt it? Read Thomas and see.
Would an addax in Denmark gyrate
if an emu in Sweden bore freight?
Or an eland in Chile complain
if jerboas in Goa refrain?
You doubt it? Read Thomas and see.
For really I thought ‘twas the onager taught
the aphid the tenor of Twi, and
that Gascony scops with Norwegians eloped
when Danes had lepers to tea.
You doubt it? Read Thomas and see.
Donal Mahoney
Let Any Agnostic Provide a Reply
After reading too much Aquinas
Would an aphid reside in an onager’s ear
if the onager’s master spoke Twi?
Or a Gascony scop with a leper elope
if a civet leapt out of a tree?
You doubt it? Read Thomas and see.
Would an addax in Denmark gyrate
if an emu in Sweden bore freight?
Or an eland in Chile complain
if jerboas in Goa refrain?
You doubt it? Read Thomas and see.
For really I thought ‘twas the onager taught
the aphid the tenor of Twi, and that
Gascony scops with Norwegians eloped
when Danes had lepers to tea.
You doubt it? Read Thomas and see.
Donal Mahoney
Marigolds, the tint of molten sun,
Battled with the aphid horde, and won,
Routing them with pungent, putrid stink,
Beautiful to see…not smell…I think.
an aphid on a
leaf. hold on with all your might!
a storm is coming!
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