Myrmecology

"Human Ant"

1.

I wear icicles for teeth

Like crown molding on a second doorway

Where the darkness of an ancient depth

Rings in a hollow bell

And an empty steeple

In a somewhere cold, a somewhere safe

And my loneliness becomes my closest friend

My only comfort

Because nothing is waiting on my window sill

To lull me into some pill

Some fresh escape

The foreskin of a dream the backdrop of a nightmare

Where quicksand beds the ruin I’ve long called bones

And ink runs like gutter water down human pages.

 

2.

They swallow the words of politicians

And the thoughts of philosophers

And the promises of prophets

And priests and soul poachers

And they baptize their children in moats

Of ill water, still water, dead water

Now furnace sands wearing the gown of an oasis

A grave of tears

The corpse of a factory storm

And they clap for Wall Street

And they salute cotton and colors and anthems and dirt

With pretty names and pretty cities and pretty roads and swears

Sewers running with ill water, still water, dead water-

Fools- f**k them-

I won’t drown in the 40 days and 40 nights of their favorite lies

I’ll run, I’ll fade, I’ll crawl into a hole and find a heart in the sky

I can feel and see without eyes

For reason can distill reason

But the unreasonable?

There is no cure for idiocy

And no remedy for humanity

But an apocalypse-

And oh, how it tastes like cold honey.

 

3.

The bull frogs sound like the hearts of children

Beating in pillowcases, in leather, in cocoons, in envelopes

And the crickets warm the night with armored harps

Rising, falling, deepening, widening

And the lake is lovely

Wearing honeycomb stars like candlelight and golden earrings

Sinking into mercury eyes, swift mirrors, brook water, cool and long

And the moon flirts like a bride before her freedom crawls

Down an aisle caught somewhere between the throat of a dream

An unknown nightmare and the empty face of some god

Oh, it hangs and hangs and grows long

With pearl hair and a pearl promise

Shot in the dance, caught in the cantina of this lake

The gut of a Longworth poem, a landscape in airbrush

And I could lie here for forever

Humbled, obsessed, in love

But you-

You prefer the metal streets

And the metal lies and the metal fashion

And the metal comic of an animal that imagines something matters

That the dirt would be infertile without its bloated touch

Its ballooning ego

Its pig of a lung

Grossing into nothing more than a burning zeppelin

Shot in the dance, caught in the cantina of this time

Bound

To fall

To fail

To burn-

 

Reviews

[Legion]

I like this. Reminds me of a piece I wrote back in high school many years ago (not posted 'cause I can't find it) called "Visions of the Ant: These Gods Above". Similiar themes going on. Nicely written. Kudos.