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Of Bugs and Tyrants; Poetry from the Glass Citadel
"Cucurbit Pests"
At dawn I’m out with tank and nozzle all hooked up,
and as I apply some FarMore® to my cucumber plants
I notice two striped beetles in one of the flowers,
and they’re making love.
I can’t spray the blossom
(It’ll hurt the honeybees),
so I just lay the sprayer on the ground and squash them.
They’re still dead the next morning by the same plant,
and I hope I don’t see any more as I continue spraying.
"Can you make mead from vulture bee honey?"
You see, no one really discovered this process until about the eighties: apparently, these vulture bees enter the eyes of a rotting corpse and they just muck around there eating whatever and create this honey (of sorts) of half-digested and regurgitated meat. And, you know, that’s kind of scary that this was found so late: scientists can utilize nuclear fission to create nuclear bombs, but they can’t see a vulture bee crawling into a rotting corpse’s eye? I mean, were entomologists just blind before the eighties? I actually remember learning about a similar sort of bug, now that I think about it. Eighth grade with Ms. Schulzer when we were talking about environmental niches and all that. I just can’t seem to remember the name of the bug for the life of me though: maybe I was too harsh on the entomologists.
But, anyway, so there’s this vulture bee, you see – first page of Google some bloke asking if you can make mead out of their honey. I just feel like there’s this hypothetical line that was crossed in just asking that question, although now that I think about it, does it make sense for me to try and find some hypothetical? I mean, you were there when I had mead once, out at Parker’s: I don’t understand how people can drink the stuff. I mean, I don’t drink much in the first place, but even with the mead just that texture was…off-putting. Yeah, my opinion isn’t wavering. Then again, maybe there’s something to be said about the relationship one has between the drink: you speak to me who drinks maybe once in a blue moon and you already know my opinion on the question. Maybe I just had another visceral reaction because of how long I was hunched over the toilet when I tried that stuff. Perhaps it’s wrong to attach a system of right and wrong.
While it’s still gaining popularity (stigma, you know?) alcohol just seems to be one of those constants you just see everywhere. What is with this disgusting fascination of self-intoxication that just trail-blazes human civilization? I mean, there’s even those anthropologists that say cereal cultivation was invented to brew beer. Could you believe that the only reason we have agriculture is because people wanted to get drunk? I can. Humans are just this walking paradox of intoxication and innovation. I don’t even think we should define that term ‘human’ anymore with words: they should just take a photograph of a drunk and stick that in the dictionary.
At least we can name the drinks though. Bee-er. The Mead Life Crisis. Trust me, you order that and halfway through the waiter tells you how vulture bees make the honey and you’d be in a crisis too. I guess my attachment was just based on past sentiments and ideals. I guess the moral is something about stubbornness limiting one’s enjoyment of life.
I think I’ll still just take a smoothie.
“Children & Flowers”
I do not like it when the children pick the flowers.
They’re young and naive, I know, of course I do,
But is innocence a good enough excuse, really?
I mean, we all know the flower dies, don’t we?
By every account, we know it dies when they pick it.
How am I to be okay with such trivial loss of life?
A rose is still a life even if not called by such a name.
Sure, life different from our own, I am not denying,
But a life all the same — can you not see it so?
Just let me tell the children, just this once, please.
I know they will not like it, but they are children:
They shall find some other game, no doubt.
Why must the children cry when I deny them?
Why must I be cruel in order to save a life?
"What the Flower Knows"
White as the bones of a dove,
White as the light high up above.
I can’t count them all
— though I do try.
What’s the point of it all
— they’ll wither and die.
Green as the grass far below the trees,
Green as the seeds caught up in the breeze.
So small and so fragile
— I think it might break.
Why is life so fragile
— Does it know what’s at stake?
Yellow as the gold I would hate to have loved
Yellow as the sun high up above.
Reproduction: primacy of life
— what nature consists of.
Of course it can make a life
— But does it know how to love?
"Reflection: Self/Historical"
The farmer examines his tools:
There is a hoe leaning against the wall.
Its blade is dull, yet it needs not be sharp,
But rather sturdy and rely instead on force.
There is the shovel, rusted from disuse.
The shoulder worn and battered from
Boots bearing their burden upon it.
But, the point is tapered, of no use here.
There is the trowel, its miniscule cousin.
It bears a point and resemblance to the spade,
Yet it’s back is arched, and its grip is shoddy.
Too small for the job, the farmer likely thinks.
There is the broadfork, a bent crossbar to it.
The potatoes are too young for its need,
And the carrots were harvested yesterday.
The farmer does not lift it, gaze past.
There the tool is, that most invaluable one;
The farmer leaves the shed, hands at ready.
Their versatility is trusted, and calluses no matter.
Soil is parted, made way by that first tool.
"Swords are Ploughshares"
Hydrangeas, hydrogen bombs, flowers blooming by the broccoli leaves
Hickory trees, hunting knives, two cardinals landing on the fence post
Helicopter seeds, howitzers, waiting by the spigot for maple syrup
Hawks, handguns, twine fastened to a young yet failing tree
Weeds, weapons of mass destruction, six feet of roots and three leaves of grass
Whetstones, warriors, a newly filed pair of pliers for adjusting shade cloth
Wheelbarrows, war machines, compost now in plastic bags for convenience
Wood chips, wreckage, too much rain pouring down draining too slow
Angled staples, ammunition, the balance between taut and loose is hard
Arched backs, atom bombs, back and forth both ways with the dutch hoe
Acorns, armaments, pulling out a little tree that almost made it
Arugula, assault rifles, taking down the little narrow hoop houses
Tomahooks, tear gas, little clips delicately guiding tomatoes upwards
Trenches, tanks, a newly bought garden weasel with three attachments
Tillage radishes, torpedoes, stapling black cloth for four weeks before planting
Death, death, for farming takes more weeds and plants than a pacifist should be comfortable with, for farming is no different from the work of a soldier
"Pleiades and the Lightning Bugs"
What do the lightning bugs see when they gaze upon our heavens?
When the blue sky gives way to that Stygian shadow overhead us,
what do the lightning bugs make of the array of stars before them?
Perhaps they have their own Almagest, detailing constellations of
firefly heroes: they have their own names for Orion and Scorpio,
and see not a wolf in Lupus nor no bull in Taurus, yet perhaps still
they see the ship of Argo Navis where we do not anymore. To think,
how funny it would seem, if lightning bugs remained more true to
human roots than we do ourselves. But, they probably see no ships,
being flying bugs; in fact, they likely see not animals like we have,
but likely themselves: in how we fail to tell apart a phone tower or
a helicopter from a real star by looks alone, surely they must think
that stars are lightning bugs themselves. For, of course, the stars
only shine bright when they do themselves. Then it must be sad for
a lightning bug, surrounded every night by brethren who never will
reach you nor partake in whatever conversations lightning bugs do
engage themselves in, yet who silently live on from your birth to
your passing, aging never a day. Yet, let us imagine instead that they
are happy for the silent Pleiades they have known, for at least the
lightning bugs must never feel alone; I should like that gift myself.
"The Bugsnatchers"
They caught crickets and toads, grasshoppers and fireflies, and
anything just a little too curious
and a little too unwise.
Their glass mason jars held
them in place so they could
marvel and gawk at each
new critter’s face.
But children are never too good
about sharing, and the two best
friends fought over lives like two
kings unerring.
The bugs in their glass prisons
watched it all: the discussions
to the arguments, to the all out
brawl.
And they would gasp and they
would crash into the glass, but
the boys would not stop fighting
as their subjects passed.
Like good kings of the past
they would do it all again.
"The Sailor and the Farmer"
Everyone knows whom the sailor loves, whom the sailor married, whose icy embrace the sailor cherishes, yet not all speak of whom the farmer married in the same regards. No, here common perception fails to extend beyond hard work, refrains from the use of that word ‘love’ in all but the most non-standard of cases. Why is that? I thought, for the longest time, it relates to our want of inclusion when applicable. Unlike the sailor, it is still land underneath the same feet: the richest palace and the poorest homestead are only differentiated in quality, not material. If the sultan razed his palace, had the armies appropriate all the fertilizers of the land, and had his servants till the field, would he not find himself a farmer? But it is not just the sultan: the sultan does not have that much power. Each of us finds ourselves in such a position, where we walk every day upon the land, not upon the water. To us, what the sailor gains, we do not lose. Ah, but for the farmer to gain the land, we must lose it: how could we fall asleep soundly if the farmer is married to what we each day tread, what we cannot do without? We do not privilege the farmer before ourselves, for of course we don’t; we must never be so altruistic, for fear of being wrong, of course. That is what I thought for the longest time, and I am sad to say that is how I viewed the sea, how I viewed the land: as but a prize to be won or lost in some zero-sum game; however, I realize now how I was wrong, and that it is not some desire to be included that we do not allow the farmer to be rightfully recognized.
I think, now, that it is to do with love, and each type of love the sailor and the farmer claim. The sailor’s marriage, though long, is not a constant. And in those un-constant moments, each second is tumultuous, each second the sailor must hazard life itself to be near. It is the definition of the passionate, of the exciting, of the romantic itself, where love must always trump life. This is the love we privilege. Yet, unlike the sailor, the farmer is not the passionate. It is that constant intimacy between companions they share, land and worker bound in perpetuity. There is not the hazardous like the sailor, lack of what we perceive as excitement, but of the mundane. Oh, the sailor always visits a new port, always glimpses some fresh creature of the sea, always rides atop some different wave from the last; for the farmer, the place is the same. But, it is not a lack of excitement – no, each day seeing the progression of the crops, their slow rise makes each day slightly different. Only, this difference is not the obvious, but has to be learned, and can only possibly be appreciated if one relents to the mundane. This is not the love we privilege, not the love in our novels, our movies, our poems, our desires. It is such a simple love, a simple union between the pair. Here, where the love and the life are so interconnected, where it is hard to tell them apart, where we desperately want to privilege love above life, we often fail to call such unions love. It has to go back to love, I’ve realized now: there’s no suitable alternative.
"Much was surely lost"
In the garden, a tomato plant stands proud
Besides it stands no other, weed nor crop
The tallest man could not compete in height
Its bounty unmatched in all the plot’s years
Bounty so great they cannot collect it all
And so, the days go by, more bountiful
In the height of summer, a snap is heard
The farmers scour, searching for the sound
They arrive at the tomato plant, and weep
Its bounty was so great it snapped from all the weight
Much was surely lost.
"The Anthill"
They actually discovered the anthill before the ant.
I don’t know what they called it then.
But just imagine all these scientists staring,
wondering just what the fuck it was.
They probably got geologists, not entomologists
in the beginning, and they got stumped.
Like, what the fuck causes that specific pattern?
We know now it’s ants.
I’m not sure how they didn’t see the ants.
Maybe they were all blind;
after all, don’t all scientists need glasses?
Well, when they found the anthill,
glasses probably didn’t exist yet, at least I think.
Or maybe they always saw the ant,
always knew about the ant,
but never actually cared about something so small;
maybe they all doubted the ant.
They had all the clear evidence that the ants did it,
but they just didn’t want to believe they did.
Well, fuck them.
"The Sin of the Birds"
Word up high cast asunder;
laid down in its cascading
realms of wonder. Unto us,
reveled and yet reviled,
In all programs pervading.
Henceforth hark his words:
abide echoed tyrant’s cry,
for he adjures all the birds
to perjure their wickedness.
He would accord them the sky.
Declared no longer a sin
for the bird to kill the worm
if the horizon still thin;
rather murder propounded,
virtuous precept affirms.
Offertory tendered to
targeted earthen converts;
truth now surrendered
willingly; anomie now
Protestant threat to subvert.
"The Salvation of the Owl"
One day, an old tree fell over, a thunderous sound unleashed.
The rabbits and the squirrels from all their burrows came forth
Scouring and squirming for some fallen treasure relinquished.
They found nothing, save in a hollow a baby owl, all alone.
The rabbits and squirrels were not owls, but they could not leave it.
So, the treasure they found was different from expectations
But they soon found it to be a treasure all the same.
The owl grew, yet it scurried like the squirrels it always followed
And it hopped around everywhere like the rabbits it admired.
But it never took to the air, for it simply never knew it could.
Then, one fatal day, the hawks spied the families of rabbits and squirrels.
Dashing and diving, the owl was confused and frightened.
Picked off one by one, it hid in a tree as its family was taken.
Crying yet determined, it jumped out of the tree like the hawks
And at that moment took flight, although it fell a few times.
It followed their trail and their scent, and arrived at their nest
Where the victors were sleeping, victims trapped up high.
But the owl swooped in, silent as the night and rescued them all
So that when the hawks awoke, their bounty was gone, rightfully stolen.
"Isolation of the Trees/The Trees for the Forest"
Raindrops gliding down like leaves
reminding me of what we could be.
Do you ever stop to wonder about
the trees standing in all this doubt?
Sometimes I find my mind wanders
to this story that makes me ponder:
The squirrel approached the old oak tree and asked, “How could you let it pass that half your seeds are eaten because of my needs?” The old oak tree smiled, and said to the squirrel, “child, most of my seeds never come to be, never stand as tall as me, and that is not a fate I wish upon them. They will have to weather the storms until their body numbs, they’ll have to reach to the sky with worry they might grow too high. The pains of being a tree is not what I would wish upon thee, so if you dare to eat my seeds, I think of it as a tree now free.”
Iron hide and hair of green,
to be a tree is quite a sad scene.
Indeed, to move not once
through days and months
to be a tree is quite a sad scene.
But even the tree can’t glean
the majesty of its brown sheen,
royal crown made of leaves
a holy measure of wreaths.
Even the tree can’t quite glean.
Even I can’t now see
the forest for the trees.
"The Spider-Poet"
She weaves her words like webs,
captivating audiences with her silky voice.
She questions our assumptions
as we call her a predator for devouring prey.
Hidden malice stored away,
we’re stunned and applauding like the flies.
It’s a performance like no other:
she is unlike Plath or Keats,
her perspective is unique from our tradition,
Mortality experienced daily and differently
makes for thought provoking pieces.
From her eyes she sees more in some ways,
even though her world is smaller.
She elevates our mundanity to the poetic,
and for that we join the flies’ applause.
"Of the Teacher Who Thought to Question the Student on Farming"
Tell me, what is farming?
It is the act of bringing life to a seed so that it might grow to be a plant.
But at what cost?
At the expense of one’s own time?
No, I am not concerned for the farmer.
Then what are you concerned about?
Not a what, but a who.
Sorry Teacher. Who are you concerned about?
You say that farming is an act of life, right?
Yes.
But what about the lives you take?
What lives does one take when farming? One is not hunting the wild animals, nor is one fishing for the wild fish.
But when farming, one is indeed hunting the wild animals, however it is not to eat them.
How is one hunting the wild animals when one’s food is coming from the ground?
When one farms, if one should find a bug upon the leaf or the stem, does one let it be?
No, for the bug might eat the crop.
So what does one do to the bug?
Squashes it, for it is a bug. Teacher, are you suggesting that since one must take the lives of bugs we should not farm?
No, you generalize what I am saying, and forget what you have said. Tell me again, what is farming?
It is the act of bringing life to a seed so that it might grow to be a plant.
But to give life to one seed, one must squash the bug and pull the weed. One must squash many bugs and pull many weeds before the seed is fully grown.
But Teacher, surely the killing of the bug and the pulling of the weed is acceptable, for the fruit of the plant we need to survive.
If the bug could speak it would surely disagree.