from (C)OVID's METAMORPHOSIS, Book the First


The Creation of the World


A mistake was I, 
formed in a whorl of the green
& the yellow & the blue & easy
baked into a cracked little blip.


The earth fell out of the sky
like a page of a dog-eared 
dirty book with hawk’s legs;


the blats of wind like a skittering
machine that makes me benign,
breath-heavy & lisping
in the dirt-piles with the plastic


frogs & the cars that turned into 
people & the men with arms
that don’t bend.  I broke the head 
off the kindly wizard


& pissed my Garanimals, & the many 
rivers of the world there on the cheap
zoned area rug where robots
fought dolls until the stupid night 


was born & its stupid dreams.

The Golden Age



First there were no rulers but the plastic ones
bent back to thwack across our knuckles
when penmanship was deemed
unsatisfactory--weaving pellmell over the dotted line
down the middle of the sand-colored page
like my our father on Friday. But where are their gods now,

those ignoblers who paddled us when their own chakras
were bent so far out of alignment? The charlatans
are beyond the wall once again, hawking
Fruit by the Foot & potted unicorn meat

for our instant mac & cheese. I hope
your fever broke, pores opened, 
those who come too close are repelled by your garlic necklace 
& mask melted from beeswax pellets. 


The Silver Age


The hard black begat the floppy that begat
the rainbow silver that shrieked
in its sheath like the mother box
of evil opened by another in another 
talented & gifted class where things actually happened
to other people & we all went out
in the rain to cry so nobody knew.


The Brazen Age


Of brown spirits, nymphs in situ
in situation comedies; friends
we rolled him
for tokens but he was full
of rotary phones.


The Iron Age


Satellites pick up the screaming
from beyond the 82 moons: 
the Nextdoor app’s atwitter
with pictures of package thieves
& recipes for homemade hand sanitizer. 
Spring’s fields will stay unsown. Caves
are safest. Leave the oxen to roam.

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from (C)OVID'S METAMORPHOSIS, Book the Fifth

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