A storm, food overpriced,
A sad Ferris wheel : inside
A clownish aside.
Attendance is sparse :
A semi-quincentennial farce,
A fart from an arse .
Fox tried to mic drop it ;
Newspeaking the flop that it is :
“ Faux are the optics . ”
Pretzels at twenty-five
Salt in the wound at this dive ;
Dreadful, the vibe .
A powerless wheel,
The celebratory spiel :
Nation in a pinwheel .
A political shout,
Spinning emptiness with clout :
Victory ! No doubt.
*[ WSB ].
Anteater At Large
As it shuffles along tall, that it searches for a wall
To excavate by claw and sticky-lick wiggly ants small .
The tail is a dusting broom, the proboscis a vacuum ;
A knuckle-walker, agreed, but don’t be fooled by its speed ;
On knuckles with rustling tail, it can run like an Airedale !
Sometimes called the ant bear
Sporting coarse, stiff gray-brown hair,
A wedge of black shoulder-high ;
The mouth shrunken down small
With a lengua, thin and tall,
To run through tunnels where ants shy .
Wormtongue solidly ant devout,
Sticky saliva pulls them out,
The stomach grinds like a gizzard ;
The front claws are like a sloth,
With hindfeet cut from human cloth—
Gametes touch, just like lizards.
For the penis and testes lie buried,
Intro missed for the babies carried .
*[ WSB ].
Drunk Uncles
Happy versus angry drunk:
One euphoric, and one in a funk.
Ted’s drunk is framed by raised brows, eyes aglint ;
Not violent when vinolent
Like punk Wayne plowing streets and piping din .
Theodore will chill and snore ;
Whereas, Wayne is simply
A runaway train .
Mary Poppins versus Torrance choppin’ .
*[ WSB ].
Skitter Feat
A lisping psithurism
To stab between waves
*[ WSB ].
Nibbling the Moon
Lebombo bone notches mark
Shifting moonshine nights .
*[ WSB ].
Listening
Chimpanzees string sounds
In pairs akin to syntax—
A language their own ;
To people : unknown .
Bioacousticians track
Squeak and squeal patterns,
Airing the data
Of specie’s calls round the globe,
A probe to hear them .
Algorithms sift
To translate wild colloquy :
A Dolittle gift .
*[ WSB ].
Apocalypse Pony
I. White
The white pony canters onto High Street
With waltzing hoofbeat on the cobblestone ;
Already the children are won over .
Calliope wind pipes in from clover,
Concentric on horse and rider alone,
The mane like a spring that shuns a dry stream .
The chiseled rider sits erect with crown,
Bow of conquest drawn taut by the first seal,
Borderlands besieged by pony and liege .
Feeling safely centered in city breach
The hurricane winds tighten like newsreel,
Headlines turn : “ PHAËTHON CAREENS OUT OF TOWN . ”
Hope evaporates like shimmer from stones ;
Grass dries into skin, the outlook like bones .
II. Red 
The armored red pony marches with clang
Across the landscape full of rising smoke
Where justice once ordered nature’s bounty ;
Now blood soaks the soil across the county,
Thundering shoes under a bellicose bloke,
The fife requiems and the base drum bangs .
Civil unrest gallops with sword upturned,
The horse ablaze knows not the innocent,
Only the stirring up of dusty hate
Of kin against kin, cutting lines of fate .
Even sacred architecture is rent
Art and culture lost, history unlearned .
The sword still drips as the warhorse aways ;
The iron bell tolls for funeral days .
III. Black
Refugees of the toppled towers roam,
Scrambling for crumbs in the smoldering crust
Of flattened wheat fields and orchards barren .
The scale-bearer scans crows and carrion,
Three measures salt and a handful of dust,
Cold the exile replacing hearth and home .
The leaden horse fixed chiseled and stoic
Remains unmoved by the starving masses
Shuffling deathlike in search of a morsel .
Just skin draped on frames once fleshed by muscle
Marks the populace across the classes—
No ex machina descent heroic.
Winter hooves cut deep into salt and loam
As the pitch-ponied mount fades into gloam .
IV. Pale 
An ashen pony takes shape from the mist
Of winter, then skates the skyline ghostly,
No twinkling wishes in a night possessed .
Hollow for a heart in the pale horse chest,
The ragged rider holds a scythe closely.
Their charge requires only graveyards exist .
Slinging the sickle, deathly chill descends,
Soul from soma sundered o’er the fallen—
The arc of the blade very democratic .
Harvest book entries are mathematic,
Accounting for conquest, war, and famine ;
Restful the last breath as the pale world ends .
The ledger is balanced; the names must stay,
But the harvested crop spirits away .
Lifting the Pettifog
Change workaday to a holiday
Whenever prescience of present
Presents a present of leisure,
Whether allocated by law
Or, weather permitting—taken .
*[ WSB ].
World Lieder
Paper tiger,
Nothing but swagger—
Limelight beggar
Stony comic,
Calm with a slingshot—
Lonely prophet
*[ WSB ].
Cumbergrounds
“ Cut it down ; why cumbereth it the ground ? ”
—Luke 13:7
Useless, as they are :
Another vacuum under the stars .
They offer no recompense
For consumption unbound,
No balm for the offense .
Debt hangs heavy in the air .
A sigh of failing breath,
Tears fall ; the dirt full of death.
No greenery, the sky rent,
Barren is carbon’s black glare—
No one left to repent .
*[ WSB ].