Pale whale

Call me Moby,
he moaned, I am
the white whale with the
golden ambergris,
a blue sheep in a green sea
the tilting eyes
that unfathomably see
and do not forget
breaking glass
and all the colors
not needed.

I have left
footprints, where I have no feet.
Though I manage to move by strokes, I tell
the surface by light in weight bars, falsetto
where exposure to so much blue and grey
was too much to separate species.
It makes one sink
and red
and takes one's breath away
making fountains
without gills.

It is my special skill,
Moby would say.

Five-thousand leagues later,
all blues went grey,
and all green
settled for sheep.



Photo credit By Commander John Bortniak, NOAA Corps (NOAA) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

A novel nosh

Hungry for something good to read,
(a never ending need)
my nose went sniffing over the shelves
seeking something scrumptious-
after my last four hundred page meal
I simply wanted maybe
a metaphor more,
another piece of poetic prose
to satisfy my insatiable nose
for narrative
(like food, how I live).

So I crack open a new
book of morsels,
after reading the back ingredients
briefly-advertising its
nutritional value.
I put my fingertip in it
and get more than a lyrical lick
or a great idea for a story-
this one is tough to chew
on, a grisly allegory
about a girl and a black flower
but the middle is missing...

Then the next one I choose
is about a fantastical mythical 
rabid Time eater-
then I learn it is really about
an avid reader.
Like a bad nut, the taste
can only be replaced
by something yummy and fabulist,
like a sweet and savory fable...

So I grab a good old classic
about some animals on a farm
and take a seat at the kitchen table-
not quite considered a fairy tale
but unprocessed and easier to digest
than that hormone injected one
with the wicked white whale.



Image of painting by Jehan Georges Vibert, The committee on moral books, 1866 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.