Bog Gob
Rich Murphy

“God leaned close as mud as man sat up, looked around, and spoke.”
—Vonnegut

When peat sat up burning with desire,
evening had already ground upon us.
Perhaps, peat sat up burning with desire,
because evening had ground upon it.

However, evening got under the dead
fauna and flora and rose to glow also.

Now, the city fornicates
with its Milky Way and dance floors:
Anthracite and diamonds.

Your neighbor killed his wife;
then came after you from Phoenix, Arizona.
Life remains hard,
but we shovel the corn meal
into the furnace and use our headlights
to dazzle god: “leave off your great caper
and string these 200-watt nuggets
around your body part.”

With all this changing matters piled here today
and enough energy to attack a mythologizing heart,
the chemist flashes, “What do you want to do?”
The technician responds, “That’s easy, nothing.”

The poet’s tempted to prescribe lying down
for a spell, so he can begin once upon a time,
erases the toaster. He keeps his ear
to the pulsar though
and diagnoses an ember for Pete’s sake!
Hi Ho the merry O,
the farmer having gelled.

—First appeared in Washington Square