“We have a winner!” The loser hears
and considers it a well-deserved fate
until some complication arises and he fears
his new status is not his real state.
Hangover, indigestion, and anxiety are careers
he must apprentice to clean his plate.

Feast and famine eventually teach a deep dear hunger
for a leap year in which to get a light-year younger.

That longing first appeared in the belly of the earth
where surging fields of energy heated a melting core
and a magnetic belt drew tighter in volcanic birth
with tectonic dilations, the titanic mother’s chore.
Megalithic pain is required to stir consciousness from its dearth
and heave awareness into the hell of awakening that all abhor.

Our own surface crustiness is fragile, the underlying mantle not so thick,
and yet we contort in agony when our thin skin is pierced to the quick.

Those ancient balls of rock, hovering in timeless space,
seek an entropy of disorder and disintegration,
seek equilibrium – they would like to slow the pace
of whatever it is that demands their integration.
But between the Creator’s mallet and the devil’s mace
is the planetary puppet-heads only occupation.

Yet, are we so different from what has rocks in its head
if our response to life is, “God, I would rather be dead!”