Herpetology Often, my worries are frog-shaped, flexed flippers flashing through vanishing ripple reflections. Poisonous green thoughts. The amphibious twisting of double-state catastrophising. I have perfected the art of doing nothing, looking busy and helping no one....

If I can shape-change myself if I can
reassemble the rubble of my vision
so I can re-see
dragonflies, apocalypses, trivia

Look at me, look —
night eyes find their way
without light.

How a Plastic Bag in an Elm Tree on Winter St. Learned to Mimic the Moon

It’s growing in what was once the tree
with the great green room.
It’s singing in yogurt
and fluttering like an amorphous pearl
of necrosis.

The kitchen window has been
my hermit cell

what shows up at dusk
 
moths of course, pale parings―
filmy, restless
dark swarf of birds homeflitting
to perch-trees
sometimes a hedgehog
nosing leaflitter
an owl wooing from the pines

Operation Alphaman

It took a great effort and I had to bite hard on the stick
to push the subcostal muscles aside.
The skin had parted easily under my knife,
though keeping the blood at bay with no one to swab the wound
was difficult. This was remedied with a vacuum cleaner

When one has lived a long time alone
and not alone your time become
someone’s history and you have grown
tired of yet another war and the world
has it in for you simply for being