Castaway                              
by delicious
she was asleep on the shores of Lilliput

a languid castaway 
gigantic 
upon the lilliputian shore
sleeps through the 
roping, 
heaving, 
hauling 
death-dealing struggle
their cries inaudible mews
to her great ears
so far above

how many men die 
when her left breast shifts,
hurling 15 from the scaffold, 
rending timbers, 
horses and riders 
married into centaurs, 
in the shotgun wedding,
of an avalanche of mammary,
the instant command 
of a mountain's fall?
 
How many entombed
when the middle 
of that ill-conceived wagon
collapses,
the foolishness of a
petty bureaucrat
far from the scene of his
criminal incompetence
brought to ruin?
The largest wagon
ever built in the kingdom,
never tested until now,
and perhaps overloaded,
considering that
the wagon's single passenger
reclines upon this long
ridiculous contraption, 
upon hundreds of thousands of wheels, 
the proud work of coopers and wheelwrights
supporting the structure that at its highest
....is thinner than her finger.

The wagon collapses 
without even a sign of
a moment's resistance 
beneath 
measureless 
incomprehensible
tides of gargantuan fluid haunch, 
flowing, more and more,
as her weight's shift
is not even finished,
before the
destruction of the proud cart is done.

The smallest portion of
her softness surpasses the army, 
conquered before it can even know its peril,
without even time for a futile struggle 
before being pressed as wet, flat and 
lost as ants.

Amid  much milling around,
confusion, and cries of alarm
she sleeps on, 
while men either
flee or die.

Her waking is a call to arms: 
her arms
come to her arms: 
she seizes battalions, 
but does not know it.
She is groggy, sleepy eyed,
and one hand has 
convulsively 
closed upon
hundreds of men, horses 
and the grass and trees 
that hid them from view.
They thought they were safe
under the leafy canopy.

They're just a handful of mucky sand, 
to be wiped
on the ground, 
as she shudders at the 
morning wetness

She rolls onto her hands and knees, 
each finger hooflike 
trampling forests into a green muck 
the cathedral-like canopy 
of the forest, far above their heads
instantly become a mulch 
of tree, horse, rider, mud, and
bedrock, ground together. 

Her hands sink to the 
depth of her knuckles, 
burying cavalry and archers...
or their remains... 
Their burial is beyond 
the depth of their tallest building,
twenty times the height of a man.

She does not see 
what she presses, 
her every move
is deadly, 
as the earth itself 
quivers in fear  
Is it possible?
whisper it: 

Yes. 

she stands
erect 

Ground and sky join 
as land leaps up
dancing towards
the moon
or merely globular shapes
flying skyward.
Where is earth,
where, a safe place 
to stand or fall,
when the skin of the land
is ripped back and
flung away like 
the rind of a half-eaten fruit?
Deep gouges, ruts, chasms,
divide the earth 
as though land 
will no longer be permitted
to be flat or smooth.
Has the Earth Mother herself
revoked her age-old
covenant of safety and permanence
of the land?

In the volcanic instant 
of her passing, 
one moment 
detonates 
the collective 
wish to live
a weak lust
of all men, 
forever squished 
between her toes,
stuck to the sole of one
who does not even notice 
their terror 
or their longing, 
as she rumbles into
the sunset,  unstoppable.