Why
I Will Not Attend Your Wedding
Thank you for inviting me
but do you remember
how we used to laugh
at the madnesses of our times?
Robot doves for weddings,
MILFs vying for men’s attentions
against designer-bodied grandmas?
Oh, how we roared
at the growing craze--faces for rent.
What appeal do stars have left
now that they are licensing
their eyes and noses
to anyone willing to pay?
Where did all our laughter go?
That man from the big city
may have put a ring on your finger,
but must you don a dog collar, too?
Must you fetch every bone the cityfolk throw,
and crinkle your nose at our beginnings,
too parochial for contemporary fashions?
Perhaps you’re no different now
to the fools who wear another’s face.
Edible diamonds will be served?
Then we might as well drink pearls!
If you like, you may bring your future husband here
and I will feed you both free-range chickens
before you start relying on rocks for nutriment.
Thank you for inviting me
but do you remember
how we used to laugh
at the madnesses of our times?
Robot doves for weddings,
MILFs vying for men’s attentions
against designer-bodied grandmas?
Oh, how we roared
at the growing craze--faces for rent.
What appeal do stars have left
now that they are licensing
their eyes and noses
to anyone willing to pay?
Where did all our laughter go?
That man from the big city
may have put a ring on your finger,
but must you don a dog collar, too?
Must you fetch every bone the cityfolk throw,
and crinkle your nose at our beginnings,
too parochial for contemporary fashions?
Perhaps you’re no different now
to the fools who wear another’s face.
Edible diamonds will be served?
Then we might as well drink pearls!
If you like, you may bring your future husband here
and I will feed you both free-range chickens
before you start relying on rocks for nutriment.
~
Caterpillar
Man
No
one wanted to touch him, of course.
A
larva the size of a full-grown man
born
of a woman who died giving birth
and
in her final moments entrusted her child to us—
Beautiful,
she said, breathing her last
and
leaving us to wonder,
had
she even laid eyes upon the bloated ridges
on
his back, the odd spiracular structures,
or
the undeniable spinneret and fearsome mandibles?
Had
we not witnessed his birth, we’d have burned him
at
the stake with the vampires and witches.
Instead,
we were kind enough to let him live
with
the goats and the horses,
who
allowed him a share of their hay and grain.
And
in the way of larval insects, he did nothing
but
gorge and grow, yet we found
that
we despised him. Caterpillar Man,
we
taunted, Why don’t you bloom?
Hoping
he would leave, we demanded that he fly,
that
he show us the majesty of monarchs,
or
the brilliance of morphos and lacewings.
But
he stayed and spun into chrysalis,
stealing
the blue of sapphires one day
and
turning into gold the next.
A shell as
pretty as this
must yield an
angel, we thought.
So
we took our hatchets and hacked away;
layer
by layer we split him open
and
found just the husk and its wet walls:
nothing
inside.
