bummer lamb bums milk off
random teats
sticking its head up
between the crooks
of thighs
its toothless mouth
is soft and pink and hungry
bummer lamb gets bumped off
big moms
unshorn ewes with sharp hooves
don’t want to know where you came from
bummer lamb
are you dumber than
your brothers and sisters
or will you become wily
and make milk from nothing given
only taken
bummer lamb
have you heard of a bummer poem
the ones about death and disappointment
bummer poems abandoned by
bummer writers
wilting in their seats
bummer poem sticks its own
wooly head between different thighs
bummer poem’s snout snuffling
in crotches and crooks
for something good
bummer poem gets dumped
and born on the screen
bummer poem
knows how to be obscene
bummer poem thinks
sucking on something
anything
is better than nothing
bummer poem wants milk
bummer poem wants snuggles
bummer poem wants to run and jump
and buck with the other poems
the whole lot of them clomping up and down
the nursery paddock
where all the little poems and lambs grow stocky
bummer poem gets its balls banded
with a tight rubber ring
bummer poem eventually loses its balls
they fall off, shriveled and preserved and fuzzy
like a lucky rabbit’s foot
bummer poem
leaves bummer testes somewhere in the baby field
and bummer dog
missing leftover placenta
finds all the bummer balls
and eats them where bummer boss can’t kick him.
bummer poem grows big bellied
on its own words
at night bummer poem is like all the other poems
curled in corners piled up bodies limbs longing
what happens to the bummer poem
after all the bummer lambs die
first bummer was Hungry Girl with her little white collar
a scrawny bummer of a bummer
needed help even stealing
three times a day
she grew so slow
that one morning
after all the non-bummer lambs scattered away
her suffocated squished body still lay still
bummer tongue poking out above
newly breached bottom teeth
bummer lambs get tossed to into birdy wash
and the ravens get fat and silky.
or bummer Hungry Boy
jumped up legs like a dog
curled into arms like a baby
gets big on sneaking fresh milk
then gets weaned like the rest
gets on with the other lambs
bummed brotherhood in the fields
only to get lured into the big truck trailer
by a flake of alfalfa tossed
deep into its metal body
little lamb hooves all clomp the same
in a feeding frenzy
while we folded up the back gate.
bummer lamb became bummer meat.
but what about bummer poem?
bummer poem dangles motherless
from bummer lips
bummer poem builds its own home
between the bodies of other lambs
they share wool and warmth
bummer poem
gets borne from
budding breaths
bummer poem finds milk
in the kindness of others
and in alcohol and in weed
and in mixing them a little bit
but not too much
because bummer poem has a
proclivity for blacking out
and bummer poem needs to get home
bummer poem
grows up to get eaten
just like all the other poems
bummer poem might not be a very good poem
but at least bummer poem learned
to bum enough to get by
bummer poem is still giving it a try
bummer poem still didn’t die
bummer poem becomes bummer sheep
because bummer poem learned to eat.