North For The Winter Poem by Lazarus Knix

It’s too dark to see the duck outside.

November, sure, a month of frozen cysts

And austere landscapes littered with

Firefly Carcasses, Trees bending sharply

To reach for their plighted children, weeping

Violently, exhaling violently, sighing violently.

I enjoying telling them sadistically-

“Thanks for the oxygen”


It’s so cold,

I’m sorry I’ve sidetracked.

There is always one duck

Sitting calmly in my yard, surrounded

By bird feces and cricket semen,

Watching the moon devour the Earth

In a sort of zen-like state. The death of

A planet, the death of light, is regular to him, a keeper

Of existence (he deals with these things often)

Mother told me madly- “WHY DO YOU THINK

IT’S DOESN’T ECHO! IT IS TAKEN AWAY

EATEN! EATEN! ” I wish she hadn’t died so suddenly

She could’ve told me what she didn’t mean.



It’s so cold,

I’m sorry I’ve sidetracked.

He waits for the moon’s

Opal breath to swat at

The fountain urinating water,

Creating an anti-rainbow, which opens

At three AM sharp,


he yells…he goes HANK!

-And suddenly it starts snowing,

Snowing large, oyster like crystals

Like mad, (albeit for only a moment or two)

That rest precariously on everything but

His frayed feathers.


Suddenly it is winter now.

The aroma of pine eradicates

Any traces of love, activity, sex.

And the duck flies away, finally.

North. North for the winter.