Most read ▸
Nathaniel S. Rounds
Village or clot?
Assault reductions.
The password.
Sleep, young meat.
Zebra rears from the inside,
and becomes,
in the end, the gendarme.
An ambitious resolution,
which is evil.
Create. He is live meat,
with increasing indebtedness
to the unseen.
What remains?
Us. Bone
is a parasitic form of trust
foisted upon children,
Expanse of moonlight
white cracks,
fissures fill with brilliant midnight.
Wind blows, perpetuates. Motion
dictates the forming of hooves. Four
corners dissipate, dissolve, disperse
across days, weeks, years, spans
of landscapes. Frame
after frame, the picture begins to take
hold of hand and mind. Miles
weave into a waking web,
a unique embrace. An understated
understanding of freedom. Of flight.
repetition breeds fascination. Garish
contrast to more malleable surroundings.
Vision is forced
to their direction.
They are their own
gravity calling eye
and ear (and heart?)
to listen
to the timing
of the variation
of their beat.
Motion develops into trance. Count
the steps, the stripes, the tails, trailing
against the grass. These walking
ribbons of wonder wave
even when they are still.
Black, white, black, white.
The pattern
whispers a wonder[ous lullaby].
Black, white, goodbye, goodnight.
Full herd: 30 head
standing
side by side or nose to tail.
Either will flip focus, turn
into a strange kaleidoscopic swirl.
Stripes move of their own accord.
Drip.
Slip. Slide to the next
body. Or maybe stretch
to embrace the entire crowd,
a cloud of communion. A site
to be savored, swallowed
like sun.
Stoic pause against frame
of field. Breath held. Waiting . . .
Waiting . . .
Waiting . . .
Snort follows
tail twitch. A world of whirling Rorschach
tests scramble. Eyes
lose focus. Cross
themselves in attempt to contain the chaos . . .
Surprise. Confusion.
These are the keys
to survival.
Crisp stripes blur. In motion
pounding a fluctuating bassline.
Drawn from hoofed sand,
it reverberates
back inside itself. Filling
its own would-be hollow with residual
strength from its own run.
Disruptive variegation catches. Eye
finds focus on extremes. All
and nothing . Holding space together,
side by side. For more
than a moment consume
the surrounding blades of grass.
Watch the colors wavering
as they walk. Unhurried, the stripings
slip, rock and rise, emulating dance.
A disconcerting arrangement of beats.
They stop and start at random. Pausing
to show the flaws in seemingly perfect skins.
The bold camouflage that does not
hold a worldly place. A twinkle, a twist,
an idea
opens like a door to the moon.
Step through. Understanding
echoes: it's so much more
than any dream.
Safety does not lie
in numbers. These creatures are not
legion. They are small, clever, groups
unafraid to sacrifice
personal space. They stand, touching
tails, heads, shoulders. Legs
cross, interlock, until they appear
undifferentiated.
Does this one have three ears?
Dose that one have six hooves?
The divides are questionable,
indeterminable. They move as one.
Silently stamping no lone print
into the dirt.
Sun bakes distinctive beast. Branded
bold against a world of solid, it screams.
Stripes have a way of dividing, driving
unfriendly eyes to their front. Forward,
they roam, run, ruining the calming
vision of the plains. They intersect
with prowling prides. Dreams
of destruction rise. With fang and fight,
they collide. Some survive, but all are marred
by battle's belligerent, residual hue.
Distinction sometimes falls
to disadvantage. Focus seems foreign,
strained, a pain seeding at the edges
of conscious thought. It becomes too
much, drains itself. Soft,
the bold emblazoning stripes blur,
amalgamate, consume
each other
and the eye
of the beholder
they anchor. Nothing
divides in this bastardized distraction.
Colors streak, lines falter, opposite
bolds boil into an easy shade
of seeping gray.