The White Rabbit at Home By Donald Illich
Windows swell,
mushrooms in the rain
letting in what
they should hold back.
Blue walls
leak emotions,
both sides of Janus,
Pandora’s spirits.
They ask,
“What time is it?”
“Where’s your pocket watch?”
“Who stole the seconds?”
The white rabbit
vacuums his home
with a wilted
dandelion’s stem.
As soon as it
picks up a dropping,
a caterpillar
leaves more.
Seasons shuffle
like cards. Fall
folds, Spring
retrieves its seeds.
The court’s faces
invade his house,
repeat the queen’s
orders for execution.
A green sprout
promises to grow
more cabbages,
birth more babies
without heads who
soil furniture,
unmake the bed.
The rabbit closes
all the sashes.
It can still hear
the swipe of an axe
in the garden.



Another poem using this image as inspiration: http://meimeichang.com/artwork/168316.html



This Tent Will Save Us

By Donald Illich

Monsters break out of their shells
within radioactive storm clouds.
Factories spurt smoke their mouths.
Eyes sprout yellow flames. Branches,
flowering devil wings, creep toward
our sleep to strangle our little necks.
Apocalypse threatens to win at last,
snuff us out like many of its followers
have wished for since history began.
The tent will save us. It has a TV,
Internet, video games, DVD player.
The outside world is a phantasm
we dispel with clicks of our wands.
As long as our three screens remain
unbreakable, we will keep breathing
recycled air. Dirt will never stain
our designer jeans, sleeveless dresses.
When everything else suffocates,
we will dream on comfortable beds.
While rain melts earth into shadows
we will play with electronic puppets
that snarl, rage, and bite at images
of disasters we're protected against
and foes we’ll never have to face.


More poems on art: http://meimeichang.com/artwork/168325.html


Dragonfly

by Donald Illich

Magma in my wings. Emerald skin,
flight without feathers. The world
around me, angles and lines, I spin
through with prey in the corners,
ready to be caught. I am perpetual
instinct. To flee from fellow monsters.
Eat whatever struggles and surrenders.
Spawn quickly where nature battles
behind the concrete complexes where
angel animals forget they’re bodies.
Blue pond water. Green-black scum.
I set the lesser insects on fire
when I ignite them with my stinger.
They revert back to fuel, protein
disintegrating, building into me.
I am what the universe always does
as life ignores its passing over one
non-returnable moment after another.
Buzzing like stars. Hungry as black
holes. Once here and once gone.
A big bang of unstoppable action,
yet unreal, mythical as a dragon.