From: ibshambat@gmail.com   
      
   The puffy clouds were flying overhead   
   And landscape was just like Atlantis.   
   I watched as had descended on my hand   
   A praying mantis.   
      
   With forearms tucked below its android head   
   It lands, then jumps, then softly walks, then startles.   
   I do not know how I can understand   
   This praying mantis.   
      
   How can it live, and walk, and even still defend   
   From all that bites, that struggles and that blunders?   
   How can exist and live upon the land   
   The praying mantis?   
      
   With head in clouds and with limbs that bend -   
   To live in timespace or in soul, it wonders.   
   And if on self or vision to depend,   
   Thinks praying mantis.   
      
   What is the multiple, it asks the dead,   
   Between the inspiration and the practice?   
   And then it lifts to sky its dirt-stained head,   
   This praying mantis.   
      
   Whereto to fly, and whereupon to tread?   
   And how to catch a machaon as it flutters?   
   And how with life's web to interdepend?   
   Thinks praying mantis.   
      
   What chains to break, what causal links to mend?   
   And is it codependence when it's shutters -   
   When in my sexual act I lose my head?   
   Asks praying mantis.   
      
   It seemed so small, why did it feel so grand?   
   And why was it not rhinos, bears or monkeys?   
   Ah, 'twas my luck to have upon my hand   
   One praying mantis.   
      
   https://sites.google.com/site/ibshambatpoetry   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)