‘ink message’

a little squat bottle
of speedball india ink
sits next to my
wandering fingertips
with a tightly shut
black lid
and a tiny inanimate glare.

even when i move it to the other
side of this old desk,
i look over and see that
its lines,
and words are forming in a
meaner glare
at my modern machine of
writing.

luckily there is not
a sharp quill feather in
the room,
otherwise i may fear for my
life as the bottle
is now out of sight.

i haven't touched it and
as i turn slowly to
see if it may have fallen,
i notice a dark, wet stain
on the tan carpet in the
shape of a large winged bird
full of
antique writing instruments
ready to
kill
my
words.

‘survivalist restaurant’

after all the
bombs
fall,
disease rips
over the
entirety of earth,
every heart gone,
no human left,
all insects gone,
trees a memory,
only ground and
sky,
there will
be but one
human invention
that will
withstand everything
and that
thing will
be the
glorious
god damned
waffle house.

all waiting
there with
a stubborn
fuck you
kind
of
brimming
love.

an orange aisan beetle,

which looks a lot
like a lady bug
crawls over our
white window frame towards
another fallen
beetle
long dead from
the early winter
cold.

miraculously,
this one beetle
is crawling with vigor
from the rarely
opened
winter window
on an unusually warm
day towards
some unknown destination.

i heard these
are stubborn bugs
that don't die
easily and can overtake
a home and this little
beetle has proved that
darwin is alive and pumping
above all of
this midwestern political
rhetoric
of creationism
and fiction.