Poetry – Page 66

First Numbered Series — #50

Venture a guess as to the formalities
contained within your average disco music,
and you may become enraptured
by its simplicity of form while retaining
a semblance of impracticality that all people
may understand when given proper parameters.

Barriers formed by popular assent break regulation
to garnish spectacular emotion, often wagering
the impartial stoicism contained by our pedagogical
monetary system of rare surplus and surprising
resilience when faced with extreme obstacles.

Any keen observer must conclude after an encounter
of archaic and asinine proportions that tomorrow
takes stage fright’s assumptions and rebrands at will,
tarnishing hope for a stalemate of conscience and temerity.

Extraction requires astute willingness to change abstraction
into benign products reserved for the paying public,
outrageous to the average jack-of-all-trades, expected
by large hordes of collective consciousness to come to life
before their eyes in swarms of instant gratification,
hitherto supplied by chants and jingles formulated by hacks.

———

Original draft written and posted to WHARVED on Halloween, 2011

Traditionalist

A subtle twinge of confidence
is all it would take to begin
a revolution around here,
but there can’t be any upstaging
of the local patriarch, the man
who throws gestures at lesser men
as though there were no way
to upheave his macho influence.
But oh, could he be any more wrong.
He’s simply never seen power in flux;
he figured he’d live his whole life
without answering to the next generation,
all the while refusing to adapt
to the new universal standards
unfolding left and right.
Call him a traditionalist, forcing
his fossil fuel agenda into the oceans
and claiming it was merely an oversight.

Tall Men

The taut tree juts
upward in space,
wanting to be a tall man,
the way it’s seen
tall men walk around
with their arms outstretched,
laughing at the circumstances
that led them to that place,
applauding their position
on the planet as apex predator
for the next few thousand years–
as though being there
had anything to do with skill.

Meanwhile, in the Depths of Space [I]

A congregation of sphinxes (Intergalactic Sphinx Brotherhood Local 167) has made it apparent that nobody will live to finish this particular quiz they’ve concocted–the most difficult sequence of riddles ever devised. An arrangement such as this can only have been composed as a way to appease the in-crowd (you know, the ones who can never have a riddle too tough, therefore devoting their livelihoods to crafting questions that have answers unknown to all but them).

A subset of these puzzling desert denizens can’t help but take pity on the doomed mortals that will inevitably come across this death trap. There have been rumblings for some time amongst a few concerned members, and these conscientious few have agreed to let Rolphus (the notoriously outspoken one of the bunch) have a go at playing the role of public defender and devil’s advocate wrapped in one.

“Brothers, you know that nobody will escape with their lives if they come across this latest amalgamation–doesn’t that irk you at all? We sphinxes aren’t just killing machines. We should at least give our potential victims a chance. Now, that doesn’t mean that every riddle has to be easy. Plenty of people are still going to die, but the rate of death can be something like 99.2%, rather than the appalling 100.0% that’s currently in place. Just give that some thought, brothers, so the history books will record a more just reflection of who we are and the art that we have thanklessly produced for millennia.”

This plea is met with a few seconds of stuffy silence before the meeting proceeds just as it had before. The quiz is not amended, and every human to come across it dies unceremoniously. Less than a year afterwards, tourism on the Sphinx planet Egregion ceases entirely.

Pinto

The Sun filters
through canopy leaves
to impose
a tinted pinto pattern
on a utility vehicle,

two-hundred some-odd
horses neighing
under the hood,
expecting imminent
metal pedaling
and waiting in July heat

for their concrete
cowboy to unhitch them
from the curbpost
after picking up
the second load
of dry-cleaning
in as many days.

The Dawn

Tunnel through a portal
leading past dungeons,
underneath a dragon
both juvenile and mature
enough to know the difference
between a swordsman and
a cake-making grandmother
when both tap on its shoulder
looking for attention solely because
a mythical reptile shouldn’t be
taking up three lanes on the interstate,
much less signaling to passing motorists
that stopping means succumbing to
orchestrated predation that predates
the dawn of our monkey brains.

Cringe

Bent, twiggy-licking finger smidgeons
hover tomorrow, but not
when the ice cream truck
stalls on the corner.
Never when the ice cream truck
frets and coughs on the corner.

But you know the time has blossomed
when those rats reach out
for their most prized trash heap findings;
you know that time reached full flower.

Rugs roll themselves into Lake Superior,
Lake Superior glares and frowns upon them.
Under the toe of a mighty Joe Stallion,
we stroll through our riverwalk
with a mischievous grin.

Cringe
and throttle that barrel-necked
orphan cherry.
Cringe
and throttle that barrel-necked
orphan cherry.

———-

First version (“You Better Believe It”) originally drafted and posted to WHARVED on 3/18/2013