A DIALOGUE ON SILENCE: (Conversations with Stick Series #9)

A DIALOGUE ON SILENCE

That there is a cicada killer, Stick.
A Gaddafi doppelganger, eh wot?

Before tea, this would be insolence
from my peripatetic avian expert,
and I haven’t had my gargled swig
to take that from my errant friend.

Sipped your Earl Grey yet? Lipton?
Take Camomile tea. No, Darjeeling
is more like it for this Intel I’ve got:
The Libyan marmoset eats cicadas
to break his fast. He needs that to
cleanse his bowels before the kill
at Tripoli, before he feasts on limbs
of marmot to march to the city’s edge.

What does it matter that rhythmic
chirping sounds would cease here
when she steers the bright craft
of her body toward the sun refracting
sunlight while she feasts on gossamer
wings flapping for a coup d’grace
to stifle the sundown song, to end it all,
much like mothers plead for murder
a la mode before the battle howitzers
crush their chanting lads and lasses,
eaten like the silenced cicadas by wild
men blowing their sons’ brains in Libya.

Shut up, Stick. Where is the Intel here?
A case of preempting Muammar himself,
retorted my now irascible companion,
before he continues his global cicada kill.

Après Gaddafi, milord, the silence of the lamb.

—Albert B. Casuga
06-10-11

Prompt: Back and forth over the yard still in shadow, a cicada killer steers the bright craft of her body, illuminated by the sun.---Dave Bonta, The Morning Porch, 06-10-11  http://www.morningporch.com/2011/06/