Experimental – Page 18

Absurdity Is Rampant

Absurdity is rampant, all you jelly bean mongers out there (and aspiring monger-types who just haven’t caught your big break yet (it’s coming, trust me))!

The point here is the absurdity of even doing anything at all, let alone to the point where we can press our most sacred thoughts into lasting pellets of intuition and wildly disseminate them–in perpetuity–across the universe.

Effort would be considered the lion’s share of the process; it’s not the transcendence of this field of shapes and arbitrary sets of value, no, how could it be? For we are but simple field mice, content to labor our way through all hours of the day, afraid to look up or take pause.

Fear of the finite, the decay, the ruination of our children within, we clutch to anything resembling the womb.

But to state these maladies is only to bring attention back to that stale old paradigm, failing to uplift, only presenting symptoms of the perpetual problems while offering no solutions. What are we to do? Dive into some kind of fantastic phantasmagorical wonderscape?

Gretchen Ann simply needed to demonstrate the breadth of her innate yodeling abilities. Never once a formal student of the craft, her superb tonality and unapologetic virtuosity always brought her audience–usually herself–to the verge of emotional breakdown.

Screaming with Imperfections

Silversmiths just don’t smithy things quite the same way these days, and I can’t put my finger on why (aside from the obvious lack of a need for hand-hammered silver pieces screaming with imperfections). If I’m being perfectly frank with you, I’m unsure as to how this topic was broached in the first place; don’t machines do all of that work nowadays anyways? The only consistent demand for old-school silversmiths seems to be mostly coming from vintage retailers and collectors in the market for replicas of historical pieces–oh, and Renaissance faires, o’ course.

Now go and do your homework before I change my mind about letting you watch the Dracula movie marathon with me after dinner.

Kicking Around Church Basements

There just happens to be a bit of that element of unbridled circuitry stalling our forensic benefactors for at least one afternoon while Bobby frets over the overarching themes present in your typical Asimov novel, even though he doesn’t know the first thing about the author (or even his first name). Bobby picked that book (Bicentennial Man) for a class project and figured he’d wing it by reading the title and filling in the blanks from there. How hard could it be? He’d at least been able to see the film of the same name, because he enjoyed every piece of Robin Williams’ filmography, to the point where he had two copies of each DVD in his home, one of each to remain unopened and eventually (in his eyes, anyway) serve as a time capsule for future generations to marvel over. In actuality, they’ll most likely end up kicking around church basements for a couple decades or two before finding a new owner–a person collecting obsolete movie technology for the purpose of destroying it and filming the act. It’s highly-conceptual. You just wouldn’t understand.

Lap Scraps

Within our stricken, conflicted
human psyches
lies the power to change our circuitry or
ignore the idea
that anything could be amiss.
We are not tragic figures all,
how could we be? Well see,
there’s the rub.
We all come from tragedy
to beget tragedies of our own.
We must avert travesty
while negotiating the roiling tragedies
unique to each of us.

On that note, I went back to the well
to replenish my joy and wonder
for words and their ability
to impact our immediate universes.

*–*–*

Read a passage about red shoes
and you probably won’t be surprised
to find that a lot of people walking about
are donning red shoes.

*–*–*

Now the plan (to be quickly rendered
irrelevant if all goes well) is to encounter
the skeletal fragments of op-ed pieces
concerning the phenomenon of right-shoulder
organ grinder monkey-carrying–
notes just lying around in various
unexpected filing cabinets, I’d assume–
to cobble together a feel-good article
revolving around the presence of that
ages-old parable wherein a matchbox-sized
chubby-cheeked angel proffers ethical advice
(of course, while also embodying
the epitome of baroque cuteness).

Look at that capuchin monkey’s little face,
so expressive!
Just like a tiny person
begging for table scraps–
lap scraps at a picnic–
while they dart their eyes
and appear to be narrowly averting collision
with numerous invisible entities
at a rate of about thirty ducks per minute.

One Fine Day

There’s something so sublime
about observing and admiring
an intriguing-yet-mundane object in space
that has never failed
to lend credence to that ages-old belief,
often eloquently-stated as the following:

beauty, that relatively universal indicator of aesthetic appeal, is more or less subjective depending upon the perception of the individual/s observing the particular object or phenomenon in question.

Why, I was gazing one fine day–
surveying the park of common human consequence
(observable to very few by the naked eye)–
when my eyes rested upon a preponderance
of turtledove squadron trainers,
and as they went about their daily regimented activities,

I looked deeply into the pools of their eyes

while they continually exhibited
the inability to break out of the checkboxes
they’d been forced to occupy through one coup or another
somewhere along the line as young (or at least, younger)
men with a passion for doing things a different way
than all those other pencil-pushing types
who would be quick to declare their allegiance
to the guild of orderliness (or brotherhood
of smug rule-abiding, and also occasionally
the bean counters collective, depending on who you ask).

Not a woman in the bunch. I chalked that up
as the fairer sex’s natural disinclination toward
imposing human rules upon flighted creatures
with the ultimate goal of turning a profit.
That’s at least
what every woman I’ve ever known
has told me about the situation.