Grated chips of leathery looks
drift from his bloated eyes.
Thin ribboned traces
his contorted lips
squeal and cant
in a cascading flurry of
puckering,
purulent,
pestilence.

They quail,
they rail;
twisted, dancing, dangled slivers
desperate to
slide and slip
slide and fall
racing to
leap
they strain,
yearn,
gasp and groan
arch and beg for
emancipation,
liberation,
salvation.

They could run, they could hide,
but he'd hunt them down
with cold green blood.
Slam them,
smear them,
grind them in
across
his clotted visage.
Strapped in place,
they flail and wail,
but
no one heeds their cries.

Condemned and convicted, a set of serfs
bound to spew a
trombone gurgle bleating,
a bray, a braying
roars into a
flagellating
thumping
remains of the days,
the days,
the nights and
days that don't end,
won't end.

Not until . . .
they gobble and pinch
wiggle and thrust
and
sink into the sludge thick depths
of his breath at night.

Author: R.j. hOylE
Copyright: 2015
Style: Lyric Flash Essay

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   A massive, long-extinct pyroclastic tuff ring hovers above the desiccated expanse of a flat, ancient, pluvial lake bed. It exploded into existence as a bloated, frantic bubble that left a hard-lipped mouth jutting above the broad, sloshing waters. Wind and tide eventually wore down the towering rupture and dissolved its southwest rampart. But then, the earth shifted; the lake drained away, and the hunched sepia form stood alone as it devolved into a squashed and crumpled jaw that continues to wither under the long days of fading light.

   Inside, the ground slithers with scattered clumps of chipped, unstable rocks. The facade, now lined with rivulets of dark brown stretch marks strains to cup the last dregs of silence before a smattering of chattering tourists clomp through the low, rolling sand banks. Sharp scrub grasses and small cacti needles lean in to grab and shred exposed flesh and clothing. A few explorers wander to the edges and dig their toes and heels into the crumbling, rippled sides. They claw and yank their way to a dusty ledge or a not too high arrowhead point. A lone hawk soars in the updrafts overhead and shoots a piercing scream at the indifferent invaders below.

It is a pale grey heart exploding from within, a muddy sulfuric fiery volcano bubbling to the surface -- it is none of these. Nikon's 2014 winning microphotograph shows a rotifer's mouth wide open.

#

You could be a galaxy, a nebula erupting, your sun-like corona hugs you. Who are you, what are you, your mouth gapes and I fall in -- captivated by the why of you.

#

In another image, you have a feathery crown, golden, and ruby. You are a festive bud of royalty. In yet another, taken from the side, you are a cool, blue sturdy lab flask. Your translucent belly swollen and smooth, it shelters your garbled, mysterious interior.

#

You and I are creatures with a tube, a foot, an eye, and a tummy. We match. Yet, diverge. We consume and defecate. We eat and are eaten. We are one, yet not.

#

Although you arise and thrive in multiple forms, multiple settings, multiple locales, you dwell in the most simple of places. You root yourself in deep waters, puddles, or gutters. You anchor yourself in film-thin water beads that coat dark nubs of soil. You stream across forest floors and seek shelter among moss, lichen, and fungus.

#

As you waver in the gentle eddies, you fondle and filter passing minutia: shreds of leaves, teeny algae, struggling plankton, and -- each other.

#

You are older than Methuselah. Far above in the frigid north, your ancestor's jaws left tiny prints in the Pleistocene peat. A rock cracks open, a microscope hovers, and there you are as you have always been . . . rising from the depths of history.

#

You are everywhere and nowhere. You hide in plain sight -- under my feet and over my head. When I breach the earth to sow and reap, I often shuffle a thousand of you, a million of you to your death and perhaps, to new lives. I cast you all about in pots, in rows, and then, into turned and turned parched piles where you wither and die. No sweet water, no sweet tidbits, you shrivel and melt away, and no one hears a cry.

#

I murdered you before I knew you. But now, I see you, and am swept up in the all of you.

Author: R.j. hOylE
Copyright: 2014
Style: Lyric Essay

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