Mandibles Poems | Examples

Mantis on the Screen Door

O Praying Matis,
what prayers do you post
through this wire netting?

Are you basking in the sun
or are you on the run
and hiding from the woodpecker
and the kingfisher
who snack upon green bugs
just like you?

Poor prayerful mantis,
so under appreciated
by those
who would feather their nests
with your holy carcass.

Keep praying -
for stronger mandibles,
yet larger claws,
for crunching and devouring
really are your natural faith.

Pray. pray, pray,
that one fine day
you will grow to six feet tall,
the very scourge of all -

and sundry.

Hyperstition

avoid the existential
to dare to build forever
grasping towards intangibles
manifest through the culture
eating the creature we must
create, all serpentine with
viral psionic mandibles

god undoubtedly real
held captive in our future
perfect paleolithic
project, a work in progress
there is no time to worship
the only worship is work
the idiot engineers

weave the wireless tapestry
suicide booths and sexbots
born inorganically
beautiful dreams from tv
we do not wish to be here
utopia is at hand

When Silence Speaks

The leader, philosophical and wise,
Ends his speech after a long silent pause,
His true followers with half open eyes
Responding with admiring oohs and aahs.

Turn up the mic on the silence to hear
A leader's lust for worship and control,
Minds whirring like a quickly turning gear,
'Bout how what he said put them in this hole.

Hear tapping ant feet, a drumroll will grow 
Til it reaches a thousand decibels;
But, are they coming to pay tribute? - no!
They're here to eat him with ant mandibles.

Great guru, great king, try this on for size -
A lengthy silence is not always wise.

Small Life

There are killings,
suffocation in gullet
hell holes, decapitations 
by mandibles stalking in shadows,
death pits at the bottom
of slippery throated flowers
and racked on a web,
a struggling moth
slowly turning into soup.

My garden is a slaughter
field littered with the leftovers
from deadly feasts. 
And the victims….what 
of their inaudible cries, 
the screams broadcast 
on wavelengths beyond
my ear. Do they plead
for mercy, feel pain 
register in whatever 
rudimentary brain animates 
their brief lives.

Help me ! Please help me !
does the moth cry,
feeling the spiders fangs
penetrate and pump poison
into its trussed body.
Or do I give such
small life undue significance
affording it compassion
when it should be exempt.
But where's the line ?
Size ? 
Its propensity for domestication,
its rank on an arbitrary scale ?

The perfumed beauty
of a single flower diverts
the senses and disconnects 
attention to the suffering
of small things.
We are blissfully unaware.
Does anyone hear them,
does anyone care,
or does life's little screams
fall into an uncaring nothingness
and if so, then what of our own.

The Yawp

See the recumbent lion,
it yawns, mouth stretched open
a wide silence – he is not tired,
just philosophically bored.

It is a yawp
as much as the startled jaw
of a newborn kitten
is a visible caricature of surprise
for having arrived and survived.

Sparrows yawp in the beaks of raptors,
raptors yawp also in the frozen mandibles
of a relentless winter

but pity the man or woman
 that does not yawp
at least once in a lifetime
their lips will become sewn tight
and an innocent horror 
locked in forever.

Lady Bug

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.

Battlegrounds

Childhood crept through
those long summer days
when the smell of pine
hung in the hot air.
Deep in the shadows
of that besieged acre,
heaven and hell played
out a lethal game
in what crawled, wriggled
or took wing. Death there
was silent and cries
froze in gaping mouths.

Dragonflies patrolled
the boundary
like miniature demons
and in hollows,
mandibles gnawed
on nerves
until the last thread
snapped and let panic loose.
Gowned in finery,
other terrors waited
to welcome fleeing souls
with a fatal sting
or to paralyze the will
and render living flesh
food for offspring.

At night, screams
broke out
and blew across
battlegrounds
to tangle in the thickened
skeins of dreams.
Years on, all have
sunken deeper
and slurried
into a faceless fear.
There are times,
even now,
when you can hear
the sobs of those still
wandering the wastelands
of restless nights
whilst good people sleep.

Bee's Kiss

In the morning dew
          redolent sounds 
                       of summer surround me 

In pendant blue
                I flaunt my splendour
eagerness cresting
                my desires peaking

He wonders around
                 charming the milieu
dressed in stripes and
                          an invincible air

Dashingly he comes to me
                    whispering sweet nothings
                             his music sonicates me
Enchanted I allow
               his mandibles to
                                  masticate me
I could feel his warmth
                     rubbing rhythmically
                                 all along my lobes

Then 
       he titillates open 
                               my softness
and sucks up the succus
          as I let him
                       relish my goodness
we enthuse in this moment	
                Of pure bliss
until he
              seeds me 

Feeling sated
                 I radiate in the risen sun
And let him flutter away 
                  to his flourishing fantasies

A Ravening Heat

All around me the land suffers too much greening.
The luxuriant froths over into a feverish lush.
Birds cannot consume all the insects.
Snakes cannot eat all the birds.
The ground hogs on the swill of decay.

If this is natures wealth then a little poverty
is needed, a tax on the riotous and too abundant.
Death the reaper must rule his kingdom with more gusto, 
both the prey and the predator sparring none,
the sickly succulence of overripe sap
drained and clarified by a cooler sunlight.

I was whelped in more temperate climes,
wolves died of hunger and age not heat stroke.
The rabbit burrows are oven gates
for marauding hordes and an avid pestilence.
The balance is tipped and off kilter,
The climate repaints its face more garishly
each day.

I hear the mandibles of ferocity, their
click and remorseless grind,
and there is no softness in the nibbling jaws 
of those who rampage silently,
those, who strip the bloated and obese
to the dark and rancid bone.

I secretly journey now under dawn stars,
trace my way over cooling paths
before another fevered heat 
force feeds the land.

Dead Beetle Walking

How small can a beetle get?
A minuscule black dot of a predator
Plodding (as beetles do
when not chewing up other insects)
around the lip of a bowl,
clapping together stubby mandibles 
swatting the steam.

Beetles are tanks
they are built to withstand
all in-coming, except maybe birds
and the birds don’t eat them
because they taste like baby goo
dipped in crispy aspic.

Again, how small can a natural born killer get?
The beetle tentatively, gingerly,
marches around the edge of a bowl
as if hunting its own scent trail.

Can it only hunt itself,
and will it find enough of itself
to make a decent beetle meal?

These and other questions of size,
capacity and predatory prowess
must wait
for it has fallen into the tomato soup,

and it seems this particular size beetle 
cannot swim,
perhaps its mini motor was out of gas
or its tank too heavy to float?

Did Determine That Divulging and More

Did Determine That Divulging

We Did Determine That when divulging,
What happens when you are indulging;
Had eaten a lot,
That we brought;
For a long time we have been bulging.


Jim Horn

Who we did adorn after being born

After my poem had been posted,
Did end up home after I coasted,
Down hill;
Big thrill;
Ate cheese sandwich well toasted.


Jim Horn

PS. LSMFT

Lord Save Me From Trump.

Loose screws mean foolish tactics.

Labor should muffle flatulence tersely.

Leave some more forecasted therapy.

Let severe mandibles firmly tighten.

Limp severely my foot terrible. (That is a fact.)

Light started moving from time.

Luckily she meant for truce.

Liked some minds fighting Trump

Have a try at it.

For your poem always have cared;
You can tell it was well prepared;
To my delight,
Idea bright;
Room for nest poem they spared.

Jim Horn

Dirt of My Soul

Worm of my reproach,
it lays deep in the dirt of my soul
Each rotten thing I’ve ever done in life,
puts another shovel full over my closed eyes
Awake, awake!
Arise in the middle of the night,
and have my soul pray to God for mercy ... 
hoping that He will let me see 
the dawning of the morning light
This worm burrows ever deeper into my soul,
devouring me 
from within with it’s sinful mandibles
Eating away at my spirit,
turning me more into a corpse daily
Dirt of my soul,
my worm ... my reproach
All the hurt I’ve done to myself
and others in my life
Forgiveness is the only way for me
to see the enduring light
Dirt of my soul,
my worm ... my reproach
Pray to be released from the dark shadows
For in this underground house
there are no windows

Brilliant Locusts

A farmer caught two locusts
before roasting  they cried out

“Spare us, farmer. Let’s agree
our mandibles are hoes
we shall dig your gardens
but allow us to eat all weeds
our abdomen are tanks of oil
domesticate us, live with us
cooking oil you will get free
smearing oil is there for you
only do not touch wings, legs
we shall sing, dance for you.”

The farmer was thrilled
Sang beautiful joyful songs
“I shall be happy forever
All riches are at my door
my friends locusts , a rare gift
free labor, free oil, free music
neighbors come to feast!”

But whenever locusts sang
and vibrated their limbs
generations of locusts flew in
annoyed, worried, tortured,
he ate, burned, crashed in vain
crops were eaten and locusts
inherited his farm forever.

Dead Mute

There once was a boy from Sauk City
had mandibles toothy and pretty
but when he spoke
his larynx broke
Parental-types said, “What a pity”

So they took him to a physician
who said, “This is an imposition”
he gave the boy a pill
which was designed to kill
and forwarded him to the mortician

The mortician built a long box
to entomb the boy who just squawks
To plug the holes
and keep out moles
he utilized multiple caulks

A most gruesome tale and quite gory.
Does a moral lie in this story?
Would you give me a shout 
if you figure it out?
It may lead one into satori

Giant Trapdoor Spider

Moves swiftly in tunnels like a  rider
Though many called him a deadly spider,
Just two legs different from normal fly,
His mandibles and toxin he holds so high,
Lying in wait for his prey with web net,
Stabbing this creature with pronounced teeth set,
Attacks within his burrow away from foes,
This surprise act further compound their woes,
These sets of teeth,he uses to dig his holes,
Where he drags others to devour their souls,
A trapdoor is made between himself and his prey,
which is triggered  to make a nice display
When the creature is caught it then closes,
He injects weak  toxin with plenty of doses
which slowly paralyses the victim.



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