No One Wears Orange Except the Accused and Pumpkins
Who are you to judge me?
he asked incredulously.
The presiding judge over the district court,
the judge answered.
His lawyer stared at him.
He knew his lawyer.
And with formalities over,
it was back to the business
of retribution.
A pool of darkness. To himself and his neighbors. A weeping willow above it, dragging its whip-like branches across the surface in the afternoon breeze. The little stone springhouse at the edge of the woods where they kept the cream sodas, the Oranginas, the cokes. The light gurgling of the spring over the rocks as it entered the pool. The olive green scum off toward the far side, where the tall reeds started in a dark green screen. The sound of a dragonfly darting past his ear, then the sight of it hovering over the pool, its whirring transparent wings, its delicately pulsing body as thin as a small, black finger; then it darts off.
The sense that a world of busyness is happening all around him, a hidden universe of intense, purposeful activity, from the grasses to the leaves, from the worms boring through the mud to the beetles and flies, to the lizards and snakes, to the squirrels, to the birds flashing in and out of the trees, to the little shifts of air, zephyrs, breezes, to the wind and the sky, to the clouds, the clouds, the clouds, those little worlds of chaos, to the sun, the unseen moon, the silent mob of stars behind the blank, opaque blue—in the apparent stillness, an endless busyness, motion endlessly rich, constant birth, constant renewal, an infinity of novel and strange and oddly beautiful forms, a panorama, a spectacle of beings he was, in effect, and maybe even in fact, blessed with witnessing and living among. A formation of fighters thunders across the sky.
One day an ant decides that all of creation has been made for it and it alone—from its creation myth in a clump of eggs in the corner of a damp tree stump, its growth, scrambling over its myriads of cousins, into maturity, its dramatic adventures scurrying over the forest floor, its toilsome existence dragging pieces of dead leaves and beetle husks into the darkness of its anthill, and its heroic destiny as an ant-angel squeaking hosannas to an ant-god in a heaven full of fellow insects—and it toils at growing its anthill and ant society to ever greater heights and to ever greater glory, to prove its grand dreams were justified, that nothing is too good for it or for its fellow ants, and that the rest of nature exists to support it, and will be, if need be, sacrificed to its interests, its survival, pleasures, whims. That ant, in its little soul and clever brain, has even invented a weapon that, implausibly enough, could destroy not only its own anthill, and all other anthills in the world, in one fell swoop, but the entire forest, the county, state, nation—life on earth itself. Such a clever ant! Such a mighty ant! And it might do that one day, just to show it can. It’s just that smart, and on a bad day, just that mad.
—That ant, he said, is me.
She said nothing for a very long time.
xxxxx
Refill
Mahbub
I am vacant, fully
If you are absent from me
I feel like burning my heart
Can’t sleep a moment
The whole night spent swaying
Firing inside and outside at the same scale
Feel like a complete cessation
How can I breathe?
O my love, be advance and permit to taste the apple
Move on the wheel to make a journey to the blissful world
And refill my heart
I am fully vacant
If you are not with me.
Slipping Through the Zones
Douglas Cole
I make my way through security
by having nothing at all
so x-ray me to the codes
even those are forgeries
I hide behind pillars of Guanine
guards can’t see among the caravans
as young Adens trick you into chains
thinking I’ll go here and I’ll go there
leaves chattering about their lottery numbers
as wind blows them down the street
Miescher has declared this a no fly zone
and with Frank and James it doesn’t take
a Holmes to unlock that crick in the neck
as a radiant fury waiting to be born
so I cruise the ergodic outposts
where a congregation of vapors sigh
against all likelihood and odds
laying gifts at the infant feet
in story of triumph disguised as defeat
ABANDONED MALLS
Weeds grow unchecked
Where young feet once played
Laces tucked in shoes
Beneath the light of summer sun
Out of date football jersey’s
Mix with gravel and smashed glass
Signalling the end of time
Cracks swallow memories whole
Burying first dates
Kisses
The timorous holding of hands
Something great once stood here
On these barren lands
Where a city buzzed with action
Saw movies
Whiled away their days
The mall
Like youth itself
Succumbs to the passing of time
Both are empty husks of themselves now
It will soon be time
For the rats
To take
Control.