Our Opossum Has a Strong Propensity for Crime
By Frank Daub
Discovered in a backyard nighttime check –
an opossum wandering behind our garden shed.
Pin-pointed face, squinting eyes.
It did not run -- to my surprise.
Only staring, lighted softly by the porchlight.
Little.
Sleek in a white-gray-tan-straight-fur-slicked-down way.
The streets around are not friendly to its kind.
This unfair truth made up my mind.
I should let the shed-bottom harbor it.
This would require: FEEDING.
I decided the feeding plan -- without data-based reference --
would be workable.
I tried every sort of natural vegetable.
Walnuts added when the berries nurtured
hordes of ants --
Not
the opossum.
The dietary effort proved it.
Our opossum has a strong propensity for crime.
Particular it is to nighttime
sneaking forays - for food of course.
(This assured the legality of it for me.)
Our opossum was not particular to dietary do’s and don’ts;
Being just inclined to FEEDING its necessary wants.
The animal had a penchant – not a preference --
an exceeding zest for anything edible.
Incredible.
It crept in ‘neath the stealth of sunrise
Easing its way into the shadows
Whispering in an unfelt breeze
Softly soothing my soul
A moment, held in time,
Waiting for my comment
An exhale of thanksgiving
A sly appreciative smile
Spreading craftily across squinting eyes
A distant chorus humming its hymn
A thousand wingbeats
Building the crescendo
Of the Bull frog ‘Harrumph”
The sensation of cool dew
Kissing my bare feet
The sweet-scented symphony
of intermingled flowers
opening their petals
sharing the warmth of morning
as I sat…..rejoicing
celebrating my place
in this awakening
orchestral
performance
A young man found an object
Unsure if it meant danger.
Here is how he chose to tell
His story to a stranger...
"By the glow of the fire
In the calmness of night
I saw this thingamajig
Twinkling near the light.
So I scooped it up
To examine it, you see.
And it started to whisper
Curious truths about me!
It revealed to me things
That I couldn't express.
My secrets, my desires,
My ideas of success.
My eyes welled up,
Filled to the brim.
I could hear the others asking,
'What's the matter with him?'
So I quickly rose and ran away
Leaving the others behind.
To find out what this was
Needed a scholars mind.
After my long, exhausting search
Can you explain to me
What this thingamajig actually is
Thus solving its mystery?
Why is it that only I could hear
The things it said to me?"
He quietly stroked his beard
While squinting thoughtfully.
"When you've found your truths
You must let it go for someone else to find.
Only the holder can hear it
For it echoes the holders soul and mind."
By Phan Tan Hai
Buddha departs, the words fall behind—
I sit chanting the Heart Sutra,
hearing Tue Trung play his mischief,
squinting, smiling, trembling with laughter.
Buddha departs, the echo remains—
I sit in silence nine long years,
hearing the indestructible sutra
gradually reveal itself within the mind.
Buddha departs, the words like mist—
the two vehicles, the supreme vehicle;
I search the sutra for a path,
writing and rewriting, never quite enough.
.
and out mine
patagia flair'd
flared
snatch'er
*zez; dictionary.cambridge.org
polish-english noun squint, a
squinting position of the eyes
Squinting to yet retain
Not just of it what outlines
As fruit's in tree's sight.
Are we not the more transfixed
In a fading light?
Inferred, my inner eye!
Whilst is as blurry figured
This sweet memory.
Yes, that stilly obsessed! Yes
This hour, life's, dusky.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Morning light finds the cracks first~
those rivers mapped by laughter,
by squinting at horizons now behind me.
My knees complain like rusty hinges,
but they still bend.
My hands, spotted with time,
still remember how to write shorthand,
how to cradle a newborn’s head.
I collect aches like souvenirs,
each one a receipt for living~
the hip that remembers the fall,
the shoulder that recalls the weight
of carrying someone else.
The young sprint past me,
their bodies loud with urgency.
I linger by the lilacs,
learning the art of standing still,
the slow art of gathering shadows,
and knowing which ones to lean into,
which ones to outrun.
Aging is marvelous.
Aging is strange.
Aging is wearing a coat
that can’t be returned.
Search for me following the lodestar,
A pearl of love whose tears drip on silk.
Through squinting eyes, the moon abandons
The sky of uninspiring gray hues.
Leaden clouds sailing and tearing through,
Moving forth; with a breath beneath a
Heaven's dream, my being it commands.
In the healing balm, please search for me.
Not anything.
It’s not a sleeping face in me.
Just gradual nothingness.
As if I’m being stewed, and stirred for hours.
But that’s just-
The Not Sleep World.
Dreading being locked up.
Feeling fascinated in a Not Sleep way.
Like there’s a bowl of ice cream under my bed.
Being devoured by dust bunnies.
It’s a ‘haha, panicked, wait a minute, ok’ way.
Not anything good or cozy.
Eyes blinking like corn on the cob.
The Not Sleep World.
Makes it into morning.
Like breakfast, or being.
Crazy corn on the cob feeling.
Just unbrushed my teeth and scattered.
I have work in a wavering, squinting way.
In a slapping the wall way.
Not good and cozy.
I hear them clapping.
Because I slept an hour at some point.
Now I can entertain the waking world.
Recognition
I would slumber in you
Squinting with an owl’s grin,
Like a standing wave
Like a hoarse flapping
My peafowl would cover me
With a chickadee’s flutter of wing
????PRECISION WITHOUT PRACTICE????
A nurse with a needle, eyes squinting tight,
Hunts for a vein in fluorescent light.
She taps and slaps, she warms the skin,
But that sneaky vein won’t let her win!
She squints, she sighs, she calls for aid,
Veins playing hide-and-seek in a masquerade.
“Make a fist!” she cries, “Now pump it twice!”
Still no vein, just skin that’s nice.
But lo! In the night, with zero fuss,
Comes a buzzing beast without a bus.
No flashlight, no gloves, no sterile prep,
Just wings and vibes and a sneaky step.
The mosquito lands with ninja grace,
No charts, no scrubs, no frantic chase.
It sniffs the blood like a wine connoisseur,
Then tap the vein...precision pure!
While humans sing and slap their thighs,
It drinks and flies before sunrise.
No training needed, no med school debt,
Just hunger, stealth, and zero regret.
So next time you're poked five times in vain,
And your arm looks like a subway train,
Just whisper softly, with no disdain:
“Should’ve hired a mosquito to find my vein!”
????VICK MANUEL POETRY????
{VMP}
Copyright ©? 23rd - 24th October 2025.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Trapdoor groans—not ghosts,
but hinges shedding rust like snake skins,
old wood sighs beneath the weight of years,
a dry cough of timber settling into itself.
Sunlight, thick as poured honey,
warms the spines of leather-bound scrapbooks
where ink bleeds into yellowed pages.
Grandad’s trunk yawns open:
Inside, a woolen uniform, stiff as frozen fish,
still guards its stripes.
A cracked leather suitcase spills sepia photos—
a bride squinting in the Missouri sun,
her lace gloves chewed by silverfish.
Under the dormer window sits
a hobbyhorse missing an eye,
its rockers having scarred the floorboards.
In the corner, discarded Easter baskets
melt into wicker tumors filled with
fossilized foil-wrapped chocolate eggs.
The beams hum with termite hymns—
tiny jaws dissolving joists
into sacred dust.
But open the window~
catch the updraft of cut grass
from the yard below.
It wrestles with the gloom,
this breath of living things,
and for a moment,
the attic remembers the world.
The darkness comes and goes
Late night drivers on wet streets
Shining headlights on closed curtains
Sunrise blindfolded by angry clouds
Fearing the moon’s fateful gaze
Eases slowly through the shadows
The dueling shades of light alert the night’s stalkers
Squinting eyes following the scurry of feet
A distant shriek warns they have been seen
The beauty of the darkness goes unseen
Drifts silently under dimming streetlights
Cools the angst of coming brightness
She plays no favorites, this darkness
Subtle lover of the moon’s intrusion
Conceals the lust of love’s diversion
Sunrise will erase her shadowed glow
Creep through the spaces of her night
For the darkness comes and goes
a crack lets light in
so squinting with eyes half-closed
highlights kintsugi ~
showing the view beholden
kowtow is so beautiful
I, looking in the mirror yesterday,
witnessed distorted eyes replacing mine;
and, too, the lips and nose, as if a sign,
seemed bent crooked, misaligned in some way.
And, as I, squinting, gazed on that display,
an unheeding hand groped at the outline
of the coldly reflective glass confine.
I watched it slowly mangle the red-clay
body which, lifeless, answered my dead stare.
Tearing tripe from stomach, and from breast
the heart, those fingers worked maliciously,
dismembering each inch of skin less fair.—
I know not who it was who flayed my chest:
I? or that demon called Society?
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