The Paranoise The Paranoise will never take a walk Without his stick that folds into a chair So he can sit and listen to the talk Of passersby who are not even there. The Paranoise will never start a fight Without a tongue that changes to a gun To shoot the argument he fears is
Dancers and Chaperones The bright, swirling gowns of the beeches make the clothes of the firs look drab
This morning in June it’s still cold. Nature does not respect calendars.
Grim News, Guys Number by which the sperm count of the average human male is declining each year: 5,000,000 Year in which human sperm count with reach zero at the current rate: 2045 Men will go extinct, and women will have to reproduce though parthenogenesis. Harper’s Index, June, 2021 The future for men looks abysmal.
The Noonday Demon Dean Benedict scanned the new girl’s transcript again, trying to pin down what bothered him about it – and her. She had completed two years at Dana Hall, where she had scored top marks in all her courses. But she’d been put on academic probation twice for cutting classes. Given her grades,
I will leave nothing behind. Where I am going, there might be something.
Slick mud on the bank. A merriment of otters Slides into the creek.
Compensation A tree gets killed. Men in a hurry finds its heart and cut it apart. Down it dies through the green and golden halls, heavy as myth, and injures the earth, falling. The chainsawyers snarl into the corpse and snag on the dryad sleeping inside. The woods boss drags her out; The lumberjackss swear
Passing Time I sit quietly Waiting for nothing at all. The cats wait with me.
Now in mid-May spring is dancing into summer. Day after day the woods and fields learn new steps. I spend my time not doing something bad for me. Negative effort is my dance-master.