“Peter Periwinkle had a car accident,”
my brother said,
as if reading it aloud
from the back
of a cereal box.
It took me three full seconds
to realize
he meant our father.
We were on my grandma’s farm
where she had recently died,
leaving chickens scratching
unknowingly in the dust.
Our father was elsewhere—
broken, back bent like a paperclip,
drunk at the wheel
when the other car found him.
“Peter Periwinkle had a car accident.”
He'd meant it to be snide.
A small, spiny cartoon creature—
ridiculous, expendable—
the punchline in a story
where no one comes to help.
I didn’t laugh.
I just pictured a blue hedgehog
lying still at the edge
of some forgotten road.
I hear it now
in a different voice—
quieter, without the sneer.
Peter Periwinkle,
still small and lost,
still limping along the shoulder
of some long-forgotten highway.
I don’t excuse my brother
for laughing when he said it,
but he may have seen something
I was too young to name.
A tsunami of black ash blankets half a world
Trash toadstool hoodoos, wastelandic pillage
and pollutant mucus ravishes lava villages
Draining is the amalgam mass at the end of the spectrum
Stone environs shock, unnatural landscapes
Polyethylene islands flushing the canvas
Carbon contaminant fumes flair in mid drift air
Virtually no place on Earth is free of the polymer fog
Foaming magma cascades over metallic mushroom roots
Spiny shoots sprout tentacles from rubber trees
Mercury and cadmium toxin leeches' groundwater
Above the quicksand are flying objects that pass as vultures
For a million magarican dollars I was greeted by a masked spacebot
Left on moonlit Luna's Lot are my collection of yin-yang art articles
I fought the good fight, yet still I lost
and you stood in brackish silence
with bitter reward in briny eyes
proffering spiny frowns
shoulders crumbled with aging ache
and brow dimpled with sour failure
I staggered dragging the last crumbs
through the madness of a blue funk
December, daughter of winter, descends with a silence that invades my soul,
Hatred crept slowly and surely into the marrow of my bones, poisoning them,
My breaths release blue beads of carbon dioxide,
Every yellow thought tears at the flesh, a needle lodged in the bleeding heart,
I wished to wear gentleness with grace, but the world covered me
With a thick layer of indifference, a veil of illusory indolence,
My petals of kindness hidden beneath ugly blue sepals,
No one looks beyond them, keeping my solitude intact,
The blue sepals stir waves of sadness in my lonely chest,
Half-smiles and pale feet, signs of deep melancholy,
Months pass and my skin is pierced by thorns, the flesh bleeds,
Dirty blue flows, my spiny armor embraced with pain,
In the world of cold, solitude becomes a silent and safe haven,
The poisoned blue flows through my veins, embracing suffering as a friend,
Guardian of the wounded heart, yet alive and beating beneath the layer of defense,
Accepting this secret burden, I find strength in melancholy.
i am double rainbows.
i am the streaks of silver in the old man's hair, i am spiny and bug-eyed.
i am the rainbow around the moon on misty nights. i am cactus eyes with a center of molten gold, i am almond crafted ones that pierce.
i am the smell after it rains. i am the earthworm on the sidewalk, i am the snail on the tall blade of grass, i am the
storm and the sky's tears.
i am the tablespoon of honey you take when you're ill. i am the spiderweb in the corner of your bedroom, i am the
comfort after the chaos of my sickness.
i am silver studded, i am the glowing omniscience of the moon's rays.
i am frightening.
i am the teeth and i am the blood and i am the bone,
i am the jaws that rip through soft skin
i am sharp teeth gnashing at any sign of emotion
and i will never take what i dish out for
my word is law.
a strange man comes with
stranger impulses after all;
i just hope you think i am beautiful.
One last Carolina Wren
jabs and hops
inside a shrinking ring of pale sunlight.
At the white door of a cold season
the wind dresses a scarecrow
with the spiny feathers
of the already dead.
Ice scabs pockmark a creaking earth.
A green legend
sinks deeper with every sunset.
We walk in our pockets
hands clasping at the blood-heat
of secretive shadows.
Boots tread through the sludge.
of an ever-lowering sky.
Ice pinholes vision,
one eye remains veiled,
the other
turns like a lighthouse.
Thresholds slip away
unreached.
Spiny horned lizard
Arizona sand digger
Flat body blunt snout
Where are you going
With slithery ugliness
Wait up old friend
Plant
Every Easter a plant with
big spiny leaves and spikes of
purplish flowers grows out of
my back, making it abundantly hard for me to
sit up against my pillows.
A thornbush, crowned by a rose
A spiny cactus, become ‘Queen of the Night’ ...
Atop fraught frames, shines glorious splendor
Heaven's treasures ~ man ought not surrender
Oh, holly tree, friend to me,
with scarlet berries to see
that delight my eyes to feast
as winter’s dearth so released.
To rest my head upon leaves
of evergreen, glossy sleeves -
spiny foliage shall seek
to hide ruddy breast and beak.
Melody of song I call
for you with snow’s silent fall,
and I, messenger of hope,
shall brighten days of white scope.
Sacred for peace and goodwill,
bringing warmth to season’s chill,
forever so shall you be -
Oh, holly tree, friend to me!
Two little kittens and a very big dog
Gazed at the creature that was sitting on a log
It looked a little slimy and it really wasn’t spiny
So, you can’t mistake a bullfrog for a hedgehog…
No, you can’t mistake a bullfrog for a hedgehog.
One little kitten said, “Please tell me who you are.”
The creature said, “The question that you ask me is bizarre,
For one lives under bushes and the other in a bog,
So, you can’t mistake a bullfrog for a hedgehog….
No, you can’t mistake a bullfrog for a hedgehog.”
The dog said, “Well I’m still not sure, could you remind me please?”
The creature said, “My skin is green and I cannot get fleas,
So though I do eat worms and slugs by moonlight or in fog,
You can’t mistake a bullfrog for a hedgehog…
No, you can’t mistake a bullfrog for a hedgehog.”
The other kitten said, “Did you come from a witch’s wand?”
A hedgehog yelled, “His skin has warts from living in a pond,
I saw him hop this morning from the pond across the road,
And you can’t mistake a hedgehog for a toad…
No, you can’t mistake a hedgehog for a toad!”
Hedgehog, O hedgehog
dear spiny, meek and mousy poppet.
In England
where the tickly grass grows
greener
we galumph in our rubber boots
up to your little
Hobbit nests
beneath the thorny bushes
were you rests.
We the ever scampy
nippers
fill tin cups with wriggly worms
leave then there
by your dinky
mossy dells.
All the pricky hogs
come from near and nearer,
to snuff and gobble
by the brittle briery
and eat their wormy mush.
Our mucky paws clap
in gay and giggly glee
to see that munchy feast,
their piddly
licky
muzzles
chomping -
quite charming.
Adults say, 'we will catch a flea'
from their pin pointy pelts.
yet we shrug
our never minds, and
our don't cares,
even bring
one tiddly tyke home,
smuggling it up the stairs
to coddle
while we playtime
with some jolly good
fun....
Have its lobster claws times two pincered off
One way sticks of this crustacean’s underwater trap?
Eight leggedly it gallops off among arthritic, bulbous trees.
And waves its spiny tail to cover up its tracks.
Dogs have joined the spirit of the game,
Spaniels with foreheads as regally as high
As their master princess on a unicorn
And will play this pint sized monster-knight to death.
Undistracted by surrealistic fish camouflaged in dark,
Untempted by sea horses following her braid.
Never can crustacean hunts be lost
When hounds are hot upon a trail of lobster sauce.
The suffix nut specifying the skull,
defining the coconut, is misplaced,
for it’s not truly a nut,
but botanically, a drape.
A salinity soaker, the prolific palm,
sultry sea-shore colonizer copious,
it’s sky-searching trunk with spiny leaf crown
holds the fruit, the traditional tropical icon.
In certain societies around the globe,
a notable cultural and religious symbol,
it’s a multipurpose fruit is versatile,
used as food, fuel and folk medicine.
Its tough shell is a strong fortress that guards
the treasure of water and kernel, sweet and pure,
like the tender heart hiding
behind stern persona façade.
Confidence is a choice,
Preponderance of undue ignorance,
Tethered in tandem to wheels of spiny leathery,
Bumpy hairs click back at a finger’s flick.
Rotations earned from itself, but more,
Tread marks lead the way,
Devouring grounds of consummate cortex,
Until tracings are unchallenged by craft.
Back and forth, a sawmill slices,
Though it’s only imagined.
Inside mind and spine seen when,
The body refuses to move again.
Which corridor of counting oneself by the shelf,
Bound leather to me be shown?
Pores of proportions, round algebra,
Confines Gaussian blurs to the grown.
I choose that which nature gifts, the will to change the mind,
Plastic melts and pressure sticks to those whose self is kind.
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