Sunday, September 7, 2008

New Found Land

Beheaded

The word has been undermined
so you think of mattocks
and stained chopping blocks

but it should be a term of approval
as in, that that is one well-beheaded young man,
and he will go places

or her beauty was beheaded with
a diadem of roses that pulsed
with fragrance in the dying light

or for use in a vow
when it must be especially clear
what we intend, as I'll
beheaded home to you

The Great Chain of Being

File upon file, every species standing on the shoulder of another species,
every individual within each species standing atop the one almost as worthy as him,
but not quite, like the rings of saturn that go on forever,
and somewhere in there is the least worthy person, standing on the shoulders
of a perspicacious ape, or maybe the ape has eclipsed him already