The Poetry of Mark Daniel Milbocker 
The Oldest of Pastimes

The jackal hunts in shadows well-lit
by catseye brushing past charcoal prey 
impulse scrawls in rapacious outlines
then warm flush precedes crimson ribbon rain
upon the thirst of callow green blades 
orphaned eggs undiscovered explain the spiral
and return the pendulum to its nested catenation
uneyed lips undulating between terror and ecstasy
consciousness stretched to an evolution of coastlines
cliffsides leaping from leviathan's depths while
the bronze of basalt spires attend the reordination
untrembling over the blue waters they rise above the
call of birds shivering in the blush of newly dewy dawn air 

and so carry their offering of revelation's marrow
tastelessly slurped, an unctuous orgy of lost grammar
masked in syntactically polite contradictions
the child with unopened eyes speaks in gasps of gutturals
which history sops into its cup of elderberry elegies
to pour libations upon the graves of those that bare their name
logic's charnel theology losing its mystical drapery
while folding impossibilities into a crimson crane altarcloth
and planting a spring crop of single-chalice-monotonies 
whose sheaves unleavened are tomorrow's only sup
so we practice our savor of turnip and oxtail soup
and leave our sirloin memories to cure to a certain oblivion
for the joy of hibernal scrimshaw eclipses even midnight's shimmer.
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