Chipper Wood Chipper by Agrimmeer DeMolay
There’re not enough pages
for the complaints barked to the trees,
every damned pine needle missing the point.
As if sawdust was weather, you chip away at
whomevers, and some slice back.
Crumbs ablate from a handheld snack,
a snip and a comeback.
Everyone’s got facts. You don’t care what
the brush wants, way too rough to follow
the trail or tracks. And they’ll all wash
out soon anyway. If the truth is a plague,
then maybe we haven’t coughed enough. Ram the trunk,
and branches give up their nuts.
See how facts dry the roots and bend once-towering
prominence and light it on fire and
level woods into plains? Were all open places
once crowded with firewood?
There’s always some bitching, by a lawyer or a mayor,
a flavor of the day.
Rise, shine, sprayer of Xs,
each stump someone else’s lair.
Revealing the water table’s a fable,
one follows a source, head-under,
and bellows,
the most direct delivery available,
yell into the yelling,
words unmade,
as an expert becomes lunch
to a flock, a pack, a parade.
Can’t hear a one.
Screw thanks. Fuck please.
It’s either the delivery fleets or the bees.
The buzzing tests wheels and wings,
a flyer free to hover,
momentarily
over you and over it,
as woods confound the trees.
The sea in the wave,
a voice in the phone,
the blood in the eyes upon you,
the ghosts of seasons in rings of a trunk,
all asking you to stop.
Still, you pour out
what’s left in your gas can
and rev up the rotor.
for the complaints barked to the trees,
every damned pine needle missing the point.
As if sawdust was weather, you chip away at
whomevers, and some slice back.
Crumbs ablate from a handheld snack,
a snip and a comeback.
Everyone’s got facts. You don’t care what
the brush wants, way too rough to follow
the trail or tracks. And they’ll all wash
out soon anyway. If the truth is a plague,
then maybe we haven’t coughed enough. Ram the trunk,
and branches give up their nuts.
See how facts dry the roots and bend once-towering
prominence and light it on fire and
level woods into plains? Were all open places
once crowded with firewood?
There’s always some bitching, by a lawyer or a mayor,
a flavor of the day.
Rise, shine, sprayer of Xs,
each stump someone else’s lair.
Revealing the water table’s a fable,
one follows a source, head-under,
and bellows,
the most direct delivery available,
yell into the yelling,
words unmade,
as an expert becomes lunch
to a flock, a pack, a parade.
Can’t hear a one.
Screw thanks. Fuck please.
It’s either the delivery fleets or the bees.
The buzzing tests wheels and wings,
a flyer free to hover,
momentarily
over you and over it,
as woods confound the trees.
The sea in the wave,
a voice in the phone,
the blood in the eyes upon you,
the ghosts of seasons in rings of a trunk,
all asking you to stop.
Still, you pour out
what’s left in your gas can
and rev up the rotor.
Agrimmeer grew to adulthood in the New Haven area but then rode the winds of time around the American southwest. He recently moved to New York. He currently writes contracts for lawyers, but every now and again something resembling a written dream will appear, seemingly from his hand. Some of these things have appeared in The Collidescope, New Verse News, and Rhino.
