Lifecycle

Last night I started the poem below with “maggot” in the first line. This morning I see a white maggot crawling across our kitchen floor so I sweep it up and toss it out the window, then look in my trashcan and see it’s coated with creepy crawly albino maggots writhing away in ecstasy. Flush them all down the toilet. I respect life, take bugs outside to release them and only kill flies and mosquitoes that won’t leave me alone, but maggots are a life beyond my zone of respect . . . something primitive and atavistic about them. Feel the same way about spiders, except I don’t kill spiders.

Last night maggot was a word in a poem — this morning they’re reality. Who says poetry doesn’t have power.

Lifecycle

You’re a maggot in womb
suck blood feast fluid
until born to flesh cocoon
to die in butterfly

You know
your basic endless loop
of yes no maybe do it again
Zen when

— Smith, 7-7-2011