peter jerrim

tachyglossus

pick phonemes from the air and
rearrange them to suit your ear

flick the long quick tongue
of your reading eye to stick
the ants of words that stream

on page and screen: strip, swallow
and dissolve their protein in your
hot dark gut

such magic, it’s amazing that
anything is communicated with
similitude in this
screaming world

so how to cool and calm it down
the effort to collect a thought
by any means but extra
sensory perception?

you read my mind!

i think i’ll follow nietzsche
down the path of slow
and sometimes painful
reading

but who will row with me
in a boat
on a sea

of slow
and sometimes painful
listening?

i watched the tachyglossus, her
spines aligned with sun
work along the stone wall
behind the house

three minutes’ work
a library
a crumbling constraint of memes

all gone the way of
whispering cuticle
and lively flesh
uploaded to a higher being

a monotreme