Karla Linn Merrifield

Asleep, I’m Preoccupied
 
with cartoon elephants, the shriveled
Babars who shuffle in my dreams;
their grotesque pooplets
makes stinky-poo from a diet
of moolah, diapers do nada to stop it;
 
and with bulbous Play-doh dollies
who crowd behind my eyelids, twisted
kewpies in multi-hued pinstripes,
blobby fists stuffed full
of itsy-bitsy c-notes;
 
and with Erector® Set robocops
motorized, accessorized—
teeny-weeny tear gas canisters,
toonsy-woonsy rubber bullet belts,
mini metal semi-automatics.
 
Awake, I occupy a poem
and my crone’s mind is not playing games;
all those little Legos® monsters
of the dark side are no contest.
The dragon heart is provoked.
 
 
 
Karla Linn Merrifield is a seven-time Pushcart-Prize nominee and National Park Artist-in-Residence who has had nearly 300 poems appear in dozens of journals and anthologies. Her books include The Ice Decides: Poems of Antarctica (Finishing Line Press) and Liberty’s Vigil, The Occupy Anthology: 99 Poets among the 99%, which she co-edited for FootHills Publishing. Forthcoming from Salmon Poetry is Athabaskan Fractal and Other Poems of the Far North. She is assistant editor and poetry book reviewer for The Centrifugal Eye (www.centrifugaleye.com). Visit her blog, Vagabond Poet, at karlalinn.blogspot.com.