Cold as Hell  
 
We stood in the sub zero
Montana ranch pasture,
Below the gauntlet of a gray sky,  
 
Five cow hands leaning forward,
Our boots deep in the brown  
Stubble and crusted snow.  
 
We stepped closer, crunching
Ice, but mute, breathing
Fog, our hands still and numb,  
 
To watch this high noon rancher  
In the Levi jacket and tan hat,  
His ears red and fingers blooded.  
 
Oblivious to the minus degrees,
He semi-crouched and tugged,  
Pulling at a panting half-born calf;  
 
Her head and neck out, but stuck  
In the womb of this bloated cow,  
Agonizing in the bloody snow.  
 
Thrashing, undelivered,
The brown mother bellowed  
But all I remember--the cold.  


Daniel E. Wilcox
Published in The Externalist

__________________________________________________

The Last Libation

 

JimTown, across the county line

Where many a poor Cheyenne

Emptied his dim future

In the short, sotted glass;

 

Nothing new of this watery fire,

The forked-tongue libation

Passed from the pallid men

Down to generations of the lost,

 

To those hunched at the rail--

Descendents of red men who

Counted coup with shining valor--
But these instead pour out their ‘souled’

 

Lives to Chief Bacchus of the bottle;

Restricted to behind the dark bars,

They shuffle the time worn cards,
Then slump, no longer ruling the plains.

 

But the Rez’s young girl, his cousin,

Only 12, copper-templed and kind,

With glorious raven hair, now

In the gathering Montana dusk

 

Tips on the dirt walk, sour breathed,

Staggers on the ‘warn’ path

Through Lame Deer village,

And passes down, then gone.

 

Says another tribe’s brave,

A leader in translation,

My heart is sick…


I will drink no more forever.

 

 

Daniel E. Wilcox

Published in Sentinel Poetry Online 

January 2007

___________________________________________

 

 

Outside the Limit

 

Working the Thursday graveyard shift
      At 7-11, I stock cold shelves of 'cours'

      Then write a college essay on dreiser

      Of how all is thin surface, all negation;

 

But alert in the night, I pray in the stillness

      While beyond the glass, the parking lot lies

      Vacant, lit by the neon signs and street lights--

      When so unexpected my mind transports.

 

I rise outside of self, see far beyondness,

      Perceive myself sitting between the rows,

      Observe the little ego in the skin and skull

      My bodied self sitting with the staid cans and jars.

 

But now awash drowned in awe, the Personal

      Luminousness aware beyond words vivid bliss

      Blessed all encompassing exalting surpassing

      Great parabled One Pearl of Being.

 

 

Daniel E. Wilcox

Published in Flutter

December 2007
__________________________________________________ 


The Redux of Moose and Men

Like moose drool down from his jaw

Liquid drip of much after thought,

The human chews his abstract cud.

 

This brainy mammal with his huge
Mental jaw ruminates and masticates

Difficult philosophical concepts.

 

He chews and chews and chaws

Minding repeatedly, and pondering

Into his daily life for good or ill

 

The meta-conundrums, the ones

He can't stomach, the ethical gristle

Imponderable quandaries.

 

Like the massive moose of the glen,
Man stands as king and all get out
In the damned lake he calls civilization;

 

Then walking into the tall trees, he

Rummages through the forest of ideas,

Philosophical redwoods towering above.

 

And he peers up searching the heights, but
Stands in the shadowed soggy morass,

The moral muddle of his shallow bog.

 

What festering future, or fertile destiny
Awaits this drooling race of man

Caught in the quagmire of himself?

 

Any St. Bernard dog, as Thoreau said,

Has more basic moral sense than
Most men who swallow gross sin whole.

 

 

Daniel E. Wilcox

Published in WordsMyth

January 2007

___________________________________________

 
 

Lapping Ideas

 

Backstroking across the ceiling

white gulls of light arcing
wing refraction


from the high intensity bulbs above
that shekel-flash on the blue body waves of the pool

bright incandescent—dare we say transcendent—lights

 

swimming in this liquid marble

strikes of lightening broken

then broken on the waves

like archetypes that shimmer in this cave
and electrify under water across the blue cement

chimeras of our mental synapses

 

After the swim, stepping out the glass door
into the brilliant sunlight--


Shades of Plato.

 


Daniel E. Wilcox
Published in The Centrifugal Eye
Spring 2007

___________________________________________


Sitting Drunk

 

There in the urban lagoon
You are a sitting drunk

Gabbled to the bar   

Waiting for the sotted-shot

To blast

Through your flapped brain

One more mallard

For the boat tender

 

Daniel E. Wilcox

Published in Word Riot
August 2007

 

_________________________________________________

 

 

The Feeling of Natural Selection

 

We saw the cow with the afterbirth

                                                hang

                                                ing

                                                from

                                                her

                                                under

                                                side

we searched the pasture
until we found on the selected ground
the small sack
with the calf—

still
born

for

never

 


Daniel E. Wilcox

Published in Word Riot
August 2007