Inklings

Inklings sans ink
Cling to the dry
Point of the pen
Whose stem I mouth
Not knowing when
The truth will out

–Samuel Menashe

(Intimations from the past month, all without a home.)

Variations on Mountain Goat

The coroner reported
Death by goat
as if that was for him
a common occurrence

*

Goat’s bones
bleached by the ocean
Goat’s eyes
in a tide pool

*

Nun stares at goat
Nun wins staring contest

*

Goat is eligible for credit card
With credit card goat buys currency from US Treasury
Goat pays credit card bill with currency
Goat repeats this process innumerable times
Goat accumulates a great many air miles
Goat visits cousin, flies first class

                           

I am going on a diet of mummies
I am going to live forever

                           

False Palindrome

Poe opines: no hope but opium.

                         

Smartcar has a bumper sticker
that says My other car
is an honor student

Smartphone can talk to anyone
for hours and also
is a phone

                        

And lo, I beheld the elephant
who appeared to me as lightning
lightning haloing its ears
tusks two curving shards of lightning
and its trunk composed of wrinkled lightning wriggling
and it sat upon a pale horse
and the horse sat upon a pale mindless angel
and the elephant said unto me,
Behold, we have slaughtered the tortoise
and behold we have slaughtered the pale mindless angel
and behold the pale horse likewise is slaughtered paste
and now it is elephants all the way down

                       

I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts

He had a trick where he
could put out a lit match
slowly with his tongue

when asked the secret he did
not say it lie in not
minding that it hurt

instead he said the
trick was that his tongue
was made of sulfur and had
been since it formed inside
him inside his mother

He produced his tongue and it wiggled like a tongue
should but it was black from years of matches

We asked, can you taste anything.
He answered, yes. Anything.

*

His brother was born a goat
and they all lived inside him

*

And their sister was a world-famous smoker of cigarettes

*

She competed at the international
level and had many awards

She lived to a very old age but the goat
burned down a long time ago

                            

Near Palindrome

Llama says, Yes, a mall!