The Wood Lions

From Denmark to Ynde,
the wood lions, made mad
no more, shrunken &
shriven, shy to a louse,
lurk the sedimental
grievings, the swamped
outlands of beech lymes,
lust down, dull. As fright-
ful: trot-hobbled cursers,
coursers unpursed, cater-
wooers wot and wilt,
fiddle witches! All
now is pussy will-
ow and parse, an-
notations set to scale.
The wood lions? Mere
mad cats now. The vatic
rabbit's a foot now.
The pissemyre's irous &
sometimes vulgarous
now. But better, it
was not, what we had.
Neither this nor when,
for the beefy bards
were more illiterate
than lard. And what's more,
they'll return, the wood
lions. Spilt worlds, words
litter ours—letters us
do sleen. Having shrived to
shrinks, anger's mad, made in
the uptake, and manners:
buf shines, waxes with-
out wane, as for regards
sent and given, lost e-
rucatives, puns, all panned
out, were canned now for
cough-nots consumption.
As well down loads better
a fart in the palm
than two in a bush.
And where, whennes, pre-
anacronymized, one's
personal digital
assistant would, could jerk,
swappe so the pistol. Though
the master's battery
is but recharged now, one
gets off o like hell,
and pocket rockets wont
lest, swoon, swale or vouch-
chafe. Even so, in-
sanitized, these days
the lights go out on
the town and there's no
seeing what we're told:
commerce set free is loot,
and the fridge goes cold.
Stripped of porn, the night
comes flat. How then lest
we our binomials back,
the tease-tickle rush
of ones and zeros—
systems down, echos re-
bound, the ghost tongues sound,
disencrypt, the old
vocabularies stalk in.
The glad-sad brains sane,
and grammar rears, roars out
of print, civets on
text, copulates our
postulates—feel their
air. For first it's fear
then survival, that
prime aphrodisiac—
their claws at your back,
they go to it and you're
wood as were a lion,
moan-omial Den-
mark from, to your Ynde.

Copyright © 2006 Jere Odell All rights reserved
from The Notre Dame Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission