totem animal

by Joe Milford

as a child told of beasts
as a boy reading of beasts
as a boy being a beast
as a man killer of beasts
as a man eater of beasts
as a man maker of beasts
as a beast afraid of men
as a beast masked as a man
as a beast killed to mask beasts
as a beast becoming a man
as a man recalling ancient beasts
as a man a dying beast
as a man an archive of beasts
as a beast shedding a man’s skin
inside this skin a beast and a man
inside this skin the child taught by beasts
who exited the womb with those masks

Petal Stuck in Dictionary

by Joe Milford

Mélange collage barrage pantheon
Serpent sylvan cistern sylph symposium
Organ xanthium tundran sap gum arboretum
Skywatch rover-monitor satellite videodrome
Interpolitician scalpel gyration in ammodium
Destitute-tron on terrible track no stopping fuel
I wish you would make me a flower, that’s all
Pantheon serpent tundra sap-mouth abuser
Sky merchant lying to the destitute for drones
A symposium of those who know to break you is $
Gyrations in the auditoriums as the welcomed
Stars burn down upon the concrete with their steps
I rove in and amongst the best and worst and say
I wish you would make me into a flower; that’s not impossible

Omnia Ab Uno

by Joe Milford

The seed of the four elements
Under the tree of Pansophia
Its roots in fire of the smelting core
Macro and micro forged into spore
I plant in the fecund dirt of my soil
Terra-theo, philo-cosmos, sephiric
Roots and limbs forming a circle
Roots growing into the limbs’ laurels
Each leaf a hand and each limb
A genealogy—brede and bastion,
Blood and stargifts—a completion
In me—my four winds about the curtains
These windows center essence
Burn the eyes and the flesh—still
The contemplation remains, the steady
Stare of the hermetic eye upon the edge.
I am the seed upon the ledge, as designed
Haphazard, the wind will plant me next.