The Poetry of Mark Daniel Milbocker
Coiling to Strike

Chimes sway lackadaisically and forth in the wind
parallel tines quivering from Bernoulli's tickle
carrying on the monotonous tone of the unweathered
where clouds fail to cyclicate cyclonically
and earth makes eddies of the dervishing maelstrom 

Here senses erode from the atrophics of ennui
a cancer of guiltless survival caught in a
pendulous trap like some swollen untunneled berry 
rotting on probable scaffolding, an unentangled query
as to which way it all is tenebratropically turning

Between the links of the forgotten chain link fence
where blackened concrete crumbles at its edge
purpose mumbles chalk drawings across the court
of more what-might-bes than historical ledger,
the absence of children surrenders the play to the other side

But rising with a side-eyed glance, a guffaw erupts
across the soilless serengeti, a release of lunacy
under an unrelenting desert sun refusing to eclipse
globs of irony spew from the final score: zero to zero
and dribbles fallen rust stains from lingering wounds

Such glimmers of hope invite the mind to scratch at the well wall
desperately crying but with poor Prince Rupert's tears 
a rain of conceptions breaking as they touch the ground
unable to sublimate the starkness of an unbecoming dasein 
sinking its toothy venom into our ouroborian vein
■





©2025 Mark Daniel Milbocker  All rights reserved.