A caterpillar walking in a baboon

And a butterfly dreaming in a cocoon

One sees through the absurdity and thinks

The other sticks to the grooves and blinks

A glistening star beholden to every set of eyes

Destined to dance across the skies

                                   A scientist once sang me a lullaby in butterfly

                                   Now I’m just a poet spelling mathematics

                                   Here stands that fateful man of straw:

                                        painted white, in a black cage

                         around average height, below average grades

                              pot on the head, hair of a balding homeless

                         perverted pedophilic paranoid schizophrenic eyes

                         sly grin of a narcissistic psychopathic sexist rapist

                         self-sketched lightning bolt on the forehead

                              tattoo of a silver spoon on the forearm

                                        porno DVD in the left hand

                                             right hand in the other

                                   vanity dripping from the socks

                                   black crow on the right shoulder

                                        black cat by the left foot

                                   love beating through the heart

               the soul of a songbird and voice of a goat trying to escape

                              taking the cigarette out of the mouth

I say,

          ‘There’s a prince paying lip service to the words community identity stability,

          and a pair of eyes and ears on every apple.

          I see a sir Chalot Ofstuff, and malfunctioning pinocchio*s as politicians.

          I’m not your property, Mr. Pumpkin.’

And scream,

          ‘I’m not jesus, just the King’s fool!’

An agent so secret, I wasn’t even told!

My mission is to reignite the soul

          and litigate to mitigate this existential risk.

My fovea lighting my way

          phobia nowhere in sight

Cartographer of philia sophia

          my cleats kept at bay in play

Longing to encounter a force called awe

          found in the landscapes of wonder

                    where life pirouettes on a pinhead for a while

Look and you will find no crest on my chest

          for the scar in our hearts flows with the crowd

                    and ebbs with the arrow aimed left

As the battle rages on

          remember the primary stage is within thy heart

                    and that’s where there’s a war to be won

                              evilly great; tragically beautiful

No matter how loud a tree falling in the forest is,

          only the ground is there to save it.

President Putin & Zelensky, please don’t blow us all up

Yours Respectfully,

          Liam Michael Hildreth

Once upon a time,

          a puppeteer blinded me at a sacred place.

Then one day…

          in the middle of the night…

                    I flew

I listen to seek course correction,

          where misdirection lies.

I write to strive to co-create SD navigation,

          where my soul flies.

The dialectic ideal ought to be wisdom;

                         it is truth

                    While sailing up the river of consciousness,

the essence is in freezing steam and gifting water back to the flow

                                        fly butterfly fly

Love repurposed me through the MIC at MIT,

     but you are the two reasons I flutter today.

by L. M. Hildreth