Category: Stream of Consciousness

Lil Yeller Fellers

I had quite the feisty colony of bees stored up,
only to leave them back in Georgia–
in the hands of my dingus brother, no less.
God, what kind of mess did I make of this?

I miss them lil yeller fellers, but
becoming a full-time yankee tartographer
means you need to make supreme sacrifices
for the good of the craft and its reception.

It’s bad enough
that folks have never heard of this field,
and even worse when they just shrug it off
like some kind of joke
without really stopping to think about it.

You know what? I don’t have the time
to convert the unbelievers anyway. Matter
of fact,
I’m gonna go get my bees back. Tartography
just ain’t what it used to be.

Microcosm

Belt the roast torpedo chicken espresso trepidation
between undertow scripture merriment
before tomorrow feels golf handler syndrome takers.

Upon victory garden memory quickeners
preside bacon cheerleaders,
content to scythe some grain,
unwind a bird line into chocolate cave platypuses.

Tom was a simple boy, never ventured too far away from his home because he figured home was a microcosm of the greater world, any unexplored tracts reserved for other people of existence, their place separate from his, and he was just fine with that.

Mingle amongst ribbon galoshes,
puddle champagne reed pushers beyond any barley crop–
unbeknownst to Gertrude,
widow’s fingers
trace forks and spoons
along the monument to any fallen porcupine quill,
infinitesimally uncomfortable through shadows and mean chickadees.

———-

Originally posted to WHARVED on 1/7/12,
entitled #81 (first numbered series)

Finding Ideas

Where does one find ideas?

I have a few options already conveniently laid out for that, just in case you’re wondering and would like a bit of inspiration for your next writing session.

Ideas may be found:

• when you’re on the back of a rhino during sweeps week
• when you’re looking for an easy win at whatever particular sweepstakes gobbledygook
• in the shower, when you’re rehashing the constitutionality of bellybutton rings
• when going down an elaborate water slide and your swim attire bunches up on you
• in the intricate landmass of one’s diverted psyche
• in the cheaps bin at your friendly neighborhood record store
• as you’re taking a break from the mindless rock breaking that Uncle Sam thought you’d enjoy doing as an act of courtesy towards the U S of A
• when the idea of finding ideas has gone horribly wrong and you’re scrounging around in the dark to try to concoct something before your friends ridicule you for taking so long to come up with just one idea, but then you remember that you don’t have any friends, and you’ve been defending yourself this whole time (while everybody around you seems to lack interest in your entire deal, which seems ludicrous to you until you passionately enlist the support of total strangers and get the reaction that only the more pragmatic among your friend group would have predicted, if said friend group were to actually exist)

So when you’re out there flagging down ideas, just remember one or two of these techniques and your creativity will flourish because of it!

No Such Luck

Journeyman centenarian, your
squadron of sheep hurlers
begged you to curdle off the cliff
while dangling circumlindrically–
as though in a play.

No such luck.

Life is a raised platform,
gawking peanut gallery
all around, over-adorned yaps
temporarily agape
toward a permanent problem.

The plight of the talented
is wasted on the non-observant.

Passenger

A charming, alarming chili bit of nonsense fried my circuits for the latest of the schnitzengruben factors, not at all unlike the sleaze you’d unravel with a long hard look at the compact disc (spectrum and all).

I helped an old lady off the bus, and ever since, people are just lumps of shit doing the bare minimum whenever possible at the expense of others. I’ve noticed that I tend to do the opposite (at the peril of tooting my own horn), where I neglect myself and only give my “authentic person” to people I don’t know a lick about. And then I turn around and neglect the needs of anyone who dared take the time to develop a rapport with this here sad sack.

All I know is this: there are ideas and there are ideals. Ideals may be met through the exploration of ideas, and ideas may only be found as a passenger of an old freight train (as it rumbles its way across the plains).

Readymade

I’m gonna let this here sandwich–tuna
and potato on marble rye–cool
on the windowsill for a minute (or
more likely three), just like
my little orphan auntie used to do

back when the regenerative stillborn
recollections astonished even the staunchest
followers of the occult (and lesser occult-like
activities cut from a quite-similar cloth (or suitable
cloth-like substance that may adequately demonstrate
the tensile strength of a natural fiber (cotton
would be the fairest readymade comparison))).

Lucky Duck

Cheatersley Everington has never had much reason to spout drivel from the tip of his dorsal fin, mainly because he never inherited one of those peculiar things from his most recent mammalian ancestry. Perhaps a few hundred million years ago he would have still had a bit of a vestige from where he needed to propel himself through the water in a somewhat graceful way, but these days it would be silly to expect such an outdated mode of transport to have any trace elements remaining. But with all that aside, Cheatersley never made much of a fuss about the dorsal shortage. He would be the first one to tell you that such science fiction elements hold no significance in his day-to-day existence. In fact, he exists during a time in the “modern” human epoch when science fiction is not a term that people bandy about. He has been afforded a blissful existence of technological and historical ignorance simply because he happened to strap on his feed bag in what we commonly call the 19th Century. Lucky duck, basking in a world of intellectual stagnation and limited upward mobility (well, until he dies of dysentery, at least).