Short of the Long-List

To be unhuman…

In all of its forms and stages,

Is perhaps the most beautiful thing.

Oh, may my Ana come to me.

Unhumans make no lists,

let alone shortlists.

Their leaders are the most proficient anteaters,

Or as ants the strongest, fittest leaf-lifters.

My leaders drink the blood of conventional literary techniques.

And pick the bones of the divisive elements out their teeth.

But may Ana still come speak?

I cannot stand unless the ground may seep ,

through the Earth and past old space debris.

For if I must compete, so disgustingly categorically,

Against, "Mother, here looks a poem for thee!"

Where combs sound like waves and the beach is the place for you and your old noises to play,

Then I will gage and grate the very soul off of this life,

And down it to the wolves and rabid hounds,

and t0 all the dogs I've seen be put down,

and wrapt in old blankets and buried on blurry days,

with rain heavier than you or your dead mother could ever weigh.

or your tight-knit stanzas could've ever thought to be.

But I am not on the defense, Margret,

I am the defense.

The defense against holding 1400 years in your thieving pocket,

just to pull out a slick note at a shitty dinner party ,

and to have not but one word first heard,

when you read your borrowed, putrid old soup from a can.

Ana, sweet Ana, murdered by your old soupy words.

But I?

Ana and I once drove a camel up a burnt orange sandhill,

with a windchime of dried bones and threads,

woven from peeled sticks we found lain in Oases.

Listen, we hoofed the summit, arms akimbo,

and dancing on dehydration,

we finger-capped the horizon's suspired fire.

We didn't see a single damn thing,

Not even relentless you.

No Ides of Marg.

Nothing.

Oh, to be unhuman…

In all of its forms and stages,

Is perhaps the most beautiful thing.

Thank you, Ana, for setting me free.