Guffaw, Scouring Hyena Poem by Norman F. Santos

In the luxuriant, yet petrified floor
Of the torrid palms of her savanna
Where the tigers’ prance and scamper
And the farce blades of soughing grasses
Are combed to placidness upon their heavy paws
Whilst his svelte and famished pillars stood
And grinded upon the torrid pebbles
And they rattled in an apprehension
And trembled upon the covetousness
Instigated by tiger’s vitriol that she identified
Whilst he sulked in the corner of her
Sparse stream of bigoted empathy
Shrouded in a discreet subterfuge;
Discreetly flagrant, a blatant contradiction
Yet no one pried, and no one understood
Not even the vicarious vulturine brethren,
Witnessing the gnashing of a tooth on a tooth,
Perched amongst the fringes of the dunes
That climbs and crumples upon the palms
Of a sweaty savanna, like fingers or claws
Clutching a prison, enclosing the meager hyena
With his tongue jutting out and slavering
Contouring a wryly bent grin, yet again
No one understood, or better yet,
No one cared, not even her scrolling clouds
That hazily undulated into his musings
That drove a frenzy to keel over just to taste
The dry and desiccated streaks of her air
A carpet of her hair, to her languid head
And in this scavenging, you may find him
If you would twist your conceited vision,
Vindictive and consumed by vanity,
He, the hyena that he is, wagging its tail
Gilded with a lacquer smile and taunt snicker
Filling the vacuous legroom of the grounds
With a dazing cacophony, the hyena’s laugh;
A chortle for a bawl, he indisputably rolls
And a snivel for a snigger, stalled amidst the tigers
This is an epistle for his glory riveted in a mockery
And this not proposed for your, neither her, mercy
This is another anthology of a thousand hunting game
For a despondent scavenger, for a hyena,
Who had reduced himself in harlequin’s mask
In order to live on, even on the edges,
Of her, inexorably, and your, obsequious villages
Guffaw, scouring hyena.