Way Before the Flood

Ancient loafers often depicted alien commands
they failed to obey or even understand,
magic tomatoes they failed to plant,
the intestines of timepieces they failed to wind up.
Light always shone in the dark,
nine bitchy, crooked priests constantly changed the light bulbs,
and it was thrilling to hide.
Liquid birds alighted on the toes of jolly,
histrionic skeletons every morning.
Winds were hollow, drunk, and afraid of scissors.

Inside

Each with a thousand and one ear,
local animals are truly messy.
They jabber of an obscure barefoot dancer
that has left her hat in a potato field
next to a bald cloud, and clumsily faded away,
stepping on moths and inflatable suns.
Butterflies love eyeglasses very much,
magpies love eyes, crows love
hearts with 3,000,000 spiders hidden inside.

They Have Never Built a Tower

I

Blackbirds may know something
about stolen suns and moons,
may sing glorious lies about it tirelessly
all day long, may slip through the fingers
of the earthmaker. Those fingers are never sure
what they have just touched.

II

Words are too happy to become flesh.
The letters never know how they sound.
Travelers stop eating countless
headaches of faraway birds and clouds.
They try to invent a new animal instead
out of their destinations.

III

A mouse can persuade a cup of coffee
to sing a psalm of an arborescent David.
The letters never know how they sound, and besides,
it sucks in a city where all the dust is human.
Fancies and vagaries of sunflowers
don’t reach here even in winter.

Nothing Special

I don’t steal ponds and lampposts anymore.
I smell catfish over railroad bridges,
eat light bulbs and drink tap water.
I feel alive like Elvis in 2049
listening to the scars of the air
or animals mocking Egyptian deities.
There is always a story I can’t recall.

Ivan Peledov is a poet living in Colorado. He has been published in Unlikely Stories, Eunoia Review, Sonic Boom, Illuminations, and other magazines.