A Drift Doze Hierarchy
Do black ants that squirm into the holes
of the feeder’s plastic yellow flowers,
only to drown with gluttonous ecstasy
suspended in ruby syrup like curled bugs
rigid in timeless amber, deserve death
due to reckless greed? Hummingbirds
seem to detest the acid taste of ants,
and since I hung this port in air to lure
their iridescent whizzing, what measures
can I take but lessons Clausewitz took
from Mongols, passed down to Sherman,
known even in mystic Papuan savvy,
that it’s always best to destroy enemies
wholesale at their nests? Regretfully,
of course, for why, o why, must a few ants
go rogue in some neural circuitry
and thus in a natural reverberation
of things force me to make total war
upon their unoffending multitude
who obey their destiny of Lycurgan Law
to bring sustenance, and now poison,
that feeds the future of a Whole
so mysteriously mindless I must shrug it
from my mind’s recumbent drowse,
mesmerized by a crimson jewel’s sway
while I await the Hummingbirds’ dance
in air as they vie in a ritual of Desire?
of the feeder’s plastic yellow flowers,
only to drown with gluttonous ecstasy
suspended in ruby syrup like curled bugs
rigid in timeless amber, deserve death
due to reckless greed? Hummingbirds
seem to detest the acid taste of ants,
and since I hung this port in air to lure
their iridescent whizzing, what measures
can I take but lessons Clausewitz took
from Mongols, passed down to Sherman,
known even in mystic Papuan savvy,
that it’s always best to destroy enemies
wholesale at their nests? Regretfully,
of course, for why, o why, must a few ants
go rogue in some neural circuitry
and thus in a natural reverberation
of things force me to make total war
upon their unoffending multitude
who obey their destiny of Lycurgan Law
to bring sustenance, and now poison,
that feeds the future of a Whole
so mysteriously mindless I must shrug it
from my mind’s recumbent drowse,
mesmerized by a crimson jewel’s sway
while I await the Hummingbirds’ dance
in air as they vie in a ritual of Desire?
