To A Beetle Dead On Its Back

Dear drone,

the tragically poor design

that has tripped you up and overthrown

all hope

wasn't your humped shape

so much as your crazy legs, your nonstop

panicked

retreat. This pavement's cracked;

you should have been more circumspect.

--I saw

a furious kung-fu

hero once on the late show

knocked flat,

and he regained his feet

in one convulsion by kicking them out

at the sky,

and the Ming Dynasty

was saved to fall another day.

Ming,

"luminous": all night long

the blue screen metamorphosing;

tokes;

the chocolate snack cakes;

the wrappers stuffed back into the box.

Somewhere

toward dawn, in the tenth year,

I stumbled upward from the chair.

Out

here under the streetlight,

I gaze down like an astronaut

at a leaf,

and a crushed peanut half;

at a bead of tar, glistening as if

I were

some kind of connoisseur,

and saw things as they really are.