natures natural lace
three millimetres in length
a true bug lace dressed
COBRA
Alert, awake, unmoving; something there;
could be an insect, maybe a rat,
maybe a snake, or a man.
Up and down the list
in fractions of seconds, need to know;
too much noise for an insect,
too little noise for a man,
rats scurry, can only be a snake.
Eyes open slowly, body frozen;
M 16 muzzle slipped to right shoulder,
the snake’s head rises left.
Flare light, head comes up
Cobra neck fanning nervously hunting;
head up meticulously watching,
Move the rifle slightly,
head up suspiciously checking;
hardly breathing sliding muzzle.
Flares illuminate the fanning head;
seconds are eons through a long night.
Move the muzzle by millimetres,
be patient, keep him patient;
Cobra neck fanning waiting for a strike,
freeze, hold breath, muzzle still.
Caught in a venomous conflict
through fates mistaken chance;
the outcome to be decided
by mere millimetres and milliseconds.
Soon when the head rises
the muzzle brought to bear
at the pull of my trigger,
one of us to live, one of us to die;
ending our courtship with destiny.
Damn mites
Not laser power or starships
Insects a few millimetres wide
We can't survive them
They sit out there in the skies
Watching us slowly dying
They won't even come down and fight
We face this doom of complete starvation
Insects, trillions and trillions came one night
Now no food can be eaten
No water is left that we can use to survive
Our lives are now forsaken
Damn alien mites
Humanity has been sacrificed
Iron skies wait to take their prize
Damn alien mites.
Seventy two millimetres of giant oink isn't a mild fashion statement. It is a hook and curve with two crevasses. A creche in a canyon jump is a dramatic effort of tree construction. A limpet lump can bring much luck to a tulip who smiles in a breezy field. Whilst free forming a piece of pie is mostly equivalent to a large vibrating fridge freezer whose legs whirl in a tinted air of colony. Oh look a basting vest. Vehicular movements. Peak of a partridge beak. Yellow yachtsman yapping yeast. Directional orbital flow. Flights of officialdom. Narrowed in broths. Fashion a fish favourably as it is driving a lorry. *** ha and eat 600 portions of porridge with one hand and electric toast with your foot. *** hahahaha *** manifestation ***
How unlike a cat is this
slender dash of ink upon the page,
this pinch of print, this little line
of punctuation, adding
its mere millimetres of meaning,
black against white,
significant in its separation
of segments of the sentence,
imbuing words around it with a dab
of consequence or moment.
How like a printed dash
is my black cat,
stretched and stark against the sun-white concrete
of the distant yard baking below,
separating nothing but atoms of air,
elongated, luxuriating,
significant only in herself –
a piece of furry punctuation
that tells us solely that it is,
and needs no function to perform.
By itself, it is of itself,
answerable to no one and to nothing –
except the rain, which has just arrived,
suddenly, in slapping, ponderous lumps,
to soak the stone page and darken it,
and drive her dash to drier quarters.