Cholera is ok I suppose, you'll shit, spew, tighten up.
It may lead you to lights out.
Typhoid, in meals, the secret ingredient, in drinks,
The cock in cocktail. It may lead you to lights out.
Rabies - what can one say ? It's performance enhancing, most
Actors playing such roles deliver solid theatrics, despite a
Slightly embarassing trace of milk moustache. It will lead
You to lights out.
AIDS is too fashionable these days, like a designer drug.
It might be Number One on the charts but really only suits
The boy bands that put it there. With all the cred that a
One hit wonder can deliver it will lead you to lights out.
I would love to invent my own lights out. The Rage Virus
Would be good, or John Whyndham's green lights ...
I hope the experts are on it, dropping them, closing them,
So light cannot escape, get through. Lights out.
The African Wild Dog will attack the domestic dog on sight '
To the Lassies, Benjis and Old Yellas:
FETCH ME A BONE FROM MAN'S BEST FOES
The cowardly Hyena
The Jackal, that consumer of human graves
The Fox, all cunning and trickery aside
The lycanthropic Wolf
The Coyote, slut of the prairie
The Dingo, object of infanticide
The Thylacine, economic terrorist of the lamb:
MAN'S
JUICIEST
FRIEND.
sycophantic,
tails wagging,
tongues wagging,
rolling over, playing dead...
continue to fill Master with primal dread
for the ones that look similar, yet are not the same
They were overheard in conversation
As they sat around a table, playing poker,
Just like the famous Coolidge painting. Discussing
The origin of their Canis propoganda as it took on a
Familiaris of its own.
names for children
extinct
the minute
the frosty biologist
froze
at blink
tameing
certain wild things
when his eyes stared still
he had entirely forgotten her and had fallen in love with nature
a tundra instead, has begun to grow
what to call a child:
Polysticta,
Cyanocitta,
Cryptogramma,
Cryptochiton,
Hexagrammos,
Eumetopias,
love is frightened and calls
him the most wild thing of all
but loves him so, but loves him so -
eats him up O loves him so
bones and all
a brand new species of biography
from the order biology, from the kingdom poetry
for the classification and systematization Dr. Georg Wilhelm Steller, appropriately
John Bryan has been published in various journals such as FireWeed, Barfing Frog Press, Salt River Review, Half Drunk Muse, Asterius Press, The Centrifugal Eye, BlackMail Press, SubtleTea, Apt, Blue Fifth Review, Tryst, Turk Magazine, Copious Magazine, River King Poetry, The Indite Circle and Moria to name a few. He is currently embroiled in The Fourth Fit at poem # 356.