Reynard the Revenant
by Mike Allen
See this bone that's clenched between my jaws,this snout too slight for breaking ribs like bread?
Wicked sparks like stardust from my claws.
Why did the Sentries raise no warning caws,
shrill birds who surely spied my four-toed tread?
Who crunched those bones so fine in narrow jaws?
At my wake rough beasts faked tears of loss.
My corpse-ears pricked up in my wooden bed.
Evil mists like stardust from my paws.
The greedy Wolf howled till a sudden pause,
faced by a foe too clever to stay dead.
Now here’s a skull, clenched silent in my jaws.
Only slysters rewrite cosmic laws.
The Lion's pelt slumps over fur slicked red.
Evil drips like king's blood from my claws.
Hear the hounds bay mourning for their boss --
the hunter's lost his antlers. And his head.
See these savory bones crunch in my jaws.
Wicked shines like stardust in my paws.
Mike Allen is a sack of juicy meat encasing bones with still-succulent marrow. His nimble and gnawable fingers have scribbled and tiptacktyped a Nebula Award nominated short story, three Rhysling Award-winning poems, and numerous other meaningless combinations of random marks. He sometimes gathers random markings made by other walking scavenger meals into a poetry journal called Mythic Delirium and an acclaimed anthology series, Clockwork Phoenix. To see more random markings he makes that don't even exist in the real world, visit time-shark.livejournal.com.
His favorite weather is cold, windless cold, sealed-tomb cold -- though he confesses, in moments of weakness, to liking slightly overcast days with cool breezes.
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