Blue-footed booby / Blood, sweat and spittle

Two poems by Paris Rosemont

Blue-footed booby

I tried to book myself

into a local ‘Birds and Bio-

diversity walk and talk’

...through swampland...

at 7bloodyAM on a Saturday morning.

(That’s how much I like you.)

Usually older folk attend these things; perhaps I am older folk.

It was booked out. I could have let myself off the hook at this stage.

Instead, I put my name down on the Waiting List.

Blood, sweat and spittle

FROM the darkness of cold, cavernous dwellings, droplets

plop a steady beat—soundtrack to the busy work of chirping

chatterboxes crafting goldmines of spun sugar magic. Tinkerbell

wings flutter as you fuss over miniature masterpieces, woven

with translucent threads. The glue is the key: your spittle

solidified into nature’s epoxy. What a marvel you are, you sooty-

winged shamans! Within each coralesque pocket, tiny treasures

are transferred for safe keeping: precious pearls with beating hearts.

WEEKS from now, your homes will be pillaged; raiders

greedy for this aphrodisiac. Whilst you glide away

from the ruins with your fledgling brood towards

new horizons, the last laugh’s on them. They—

with their strange little kinks, slurping on your saliva,

calling it the caviar of the east.