August 2015
I hope as a poet that the interesting part of me is the poetry; my life has been blissfully dull, somewhat by design, somewhat by the nature of this particular happy beast. RL over MFA - I have measured out my life in acronyms. I've also had poems and stories in several hundred magazines over the past 40 years, as well as two chapbooks: The Stations of the Cross and THIS WAY TO THE EGRESS, and two e-books, The City Of Now And Then, and A Book of Psalms. I've appeared in several anthologies, among them: Inside/Out: A Gathering Of Poets; The Irreal Reader (Cafe Irreal); and multiple volumes of Reflections on a Blue Planet.
the Yeti crab
It's neither Yeti nor crab, but it is blind
(since deep sea life mimes vision, not with eyes,
but tendrils touching the current). It's the size
"of a salad plate" (since living is defined
in terms of what feeds life). Its shell is white,
its legs are six, its claws are long, to seize
a life to feed on (since abilities
succeed and breed, or fail and lose the fight).
So life with clever, clumsy claws will make
fresh things from old, make the familiar new.
So what repeats with variation claims
attention through survival as its due.
So now there is another beast to break
and keep the patterns, seizing both its names.
to Michael Vick
There has to be the possibility
of some redemption, doesn't there? Or else
our deeds will feast on all we will have lost,
tear us limb and innard from ourselves
till all that's left is stain and smear of cost
writ on a windblown scrap of eternity.
The guilty flagellate each others' skins.
The casual spill the cup they might have drunk.
But what of those whom sight of helplessness
made ravenous? Those stones, who once could think
their thwartless might sufficient cause to bless
the cut and parcel of powerless innocence.
Can we endure this pardon? Can they come
out of that doom, into some common dream?
©2015 J B Mulligan