Eating Ants

From The Body's Question: Poems Tracey K Smith US Poet Laureate 2018

Ants love sweets. I relate. I relate.

Crave is me.

Save the colony, are they.

Alone in my honey ...

Swarms about my crumbs ...

My home in their planet.

He chides. More Protein.

Eat more insects, scientists say. 

I am without their predictability
a persistent pheromone informed calculus 
I am tornado like shadowing above them 
in my fear of itchy contamination. 

It is in my head: automatic negative thoughts.
Bait them, slow to the queen they go. 
No.

Voices in my head;
I'd rather not kill the ants but I do want to be rid'f 'em. 
What of an Option B?

Mock (giggle)
Eat ANTS.

Chorus
We need ants.

Refrain 
There is science! 

Yuck surfaces from my gut's own microbiome.


I am not at the ready to extinguish life
to partner with residual guilt
I am open to sharing space with planet savers
oblivious to true knowing

It is in my heart: be mindful
seductively resilience comes among the pharmakons 
vinegar and cinnamon.

Notes: 
This poem evolved from a satirical exchange about real life ants in the kitchen. While writing I encountered nudges on this poems' purpose as I try to wedge into my life more time for poem-ing. 
After a chat with a local poet I seek and find again the inaugural reading by Tracy K Smith. I scan and listen soon to hear the poetic reference to ants and purpose and reach Joy and poem such that "The body is memory". 
In my next attempt to squeeze in some writing time - I listen with some disappointment to Dr. Daniel Amen reading of his children's book. 
Distracted from life-balance again by tasks at the intersection of me and work [In chunks it appeared on my LinkedIn while posting my 5th anniversary search for collaborators] I click; nudged by prior knowing through Community TV curation and a friend who often connects me to a world bigger than my box. I take time to listen to informing promotional videos by Adam Grant and Sheryl Sandberg about the nonprofit Option B which just so happens to be more on what to do about ANT specifically when beset by trauma.

And as I revel in the puzzling of words, word usage examples play along: 

mindful eating will allow you to savor your food and eat more intuitively rather than emotionally

and end in a surreal wrap-up with the term pharmakon (Jacques Derrida Plato's Pharmacy) and inference by David Foster Wallace 

The self-conscious appearance of unself-consciousness is the grand illusion behind TV's mirror-hall of illusions; and, for us, the Audience, it is both medicine and poison

Sips

when one opens
doors passed by in bygone days
inhales 
up-close a fragrance of Prosperity Roses 
teeters on that edge
a foothold in now

sips
a wine nuanced with bourbon barrels
being neither wine nor bourbon
being other
assertive by review and outcome

when one opens
doors in policy of equal chances
rising to the top
sinking to the bottom
flocculating peradventure
intimate and forgiving
carnality
a privilege 
stamen defunct 
musky with age a short blush 
decades rooted 
thus extroverted and demoded 
desired consequences flower
peak masterfully
among seductive
sips

It is the talk that lingers.

~~~~
The poem began as this .... Did it evolve or devolve with a day of attention.

when one opens
doors passed by in bygone days
sips
a wine nuanced with bourbon aged barrels,
being neither, being other, assertive
by review and outcome

doors, in policy of equal chances,
desired consequences
peak masterfully
among seductive
sips.

It is the talk that lingers.

Reprise

Here is where
a suffocating numbness of noise
collides into a
limitless vacuum of silence

again and again and again
Here is where
trending , Heade
yields to observation

Exotic painted
He returns
Hummingbird in Brazil
cacophony and orchids

Touching eternity
within brush strokes
Here is where
He returns.

Reprise

Here is where
limitless bewilderment
displays in lines
drawn - cross - poem
trend in fleeting noise
painted beauty
observed.

~~~

It is poetry month. I try to observe this with more listening, sharing and (with provocation) writing. Two things I often cherish, collections of responsive media and Found Poems, were referenced at a reading in a manner that created a distaste. Thus, a provocation. A poem.  

Eternity Made Visible

Upon reading Merton’s elegies
To Hemingway, Thurber and the Monastery Barn
In days closer to my ashes
I appreciate the container – eternity, formed in words.

My Mom tells her Doctor

I am the last. There are no others. I lost my brother.

In this moment she does not belong to the remaining quintet of her children, broken                        two decades before when she lost a son, her favorite.

In this moment she is wandering an eternity made visible, in skies undiluted by humanity.              Her captcha distinguishes her soul from the involuntary carrying-on of her heart.

In this moment her face lightens as if a Spring sun just reminded her of a new season, or                  her one good ear heard the caterwauling of their youthful mischief.

My Mom tells her Doctor

My brother did not know his present. He would not have known                                                                                                     I was not there.

My Mom tells her Doctor

They said "He had a smile on his face." Me too.                                                                                                                                  When I remember.

In this moment I kiss her brow and we carry on.