World War Cricket (a poem)

Thursday, September 25, 2025

Crickets on the patio,
close to home,
in the light—
their wings strike like bowstrings,
scraping the night into rhythm.

A tight chorus rises,
kee kee kee kee kee,
a thousand calls converging,
not noise,
but a field of signals.

The night is a contest
of endurance, volume, and rhythm.

Each chirp burns the body,
each refrain is a gamble,
a third of their strength
spent on the chance of a mate.

Hump, hump, hump
to find a happy place.

What a circus:
every bush a stage,
every male a violinist,
every female a critic,
listening for the one
who holds the line.

The mechanisms and the motivation,
all for the mere prospect—
that even the wildest success
would measure a handful.

Most sing in vain.
Some break through once.
A few, the tireless,
mate again and again
until their bodies collapse.

No rest for the wicked cricket.
The wheel turns,
life cranks forward,
and the whole hillside hums—
a cathedral of friction,
an orchestra of hunger,
time itself
ticking inside the call.

They be what they be.
No debate in the wings,
no pause before the scraping starts.

World War Cricket—
generations climbing corpses,
using the dead as ladders,
mountains of want
stacked to the moon.

Hump, hump, hump
to find a happy place.

Each wave thinks they’re first
to crack this code,
but they’re just more meat
flopping over the pile,
adding bone to the foundation
of fuck-ups and failures.

The losers become the ground.
The winners become the losers.
The wheel keeps grinding.

Zombie crickets,
but worse—
zombies don’t choose.
These bastards sing themselves to death
knowing the odds,
eyes wide,
wings burning,
humping toward impossible.

What were we,
and what will we be?

We can’t stop.
Our parents’ parents showed us,
engrained the groove,
a trail turned superhighway,
a rut worn wide enough
to swallow generations.

The drive is older than us,
passed hand to hand,
wing to wing.

Hump, hump, hump
to find a happy place.

Not for meaning.
Not for purpose.
Because that’s what crickets do,
and we are crickets.

The contest is fixed—
everyone wins by bleeding.
Every scraped wing builds the cathedral.
Every dead call holds up
the next fool’s stage.

Stacks on stacks on stacks,
generations deep,
all humping the same dream,
all becoming the same dirt
for the next batch
to stand on.

The night doesn’t care
who makes it.
The night just wants
the sound.

They be what they be.
And what they be
is exactly
what gets stacked.

✦ Keep humping.