Category: surrealism

To and Fro

Suppose you start stammering
at these shimmering jewels
on your nightstand, as though
you’ve established some
sort of language connection
in the realm of Greater Jewelese.

You do innately understand
that jewels possess no mental capacities,
but that seems only to fuel your curiosity
as you divulge your deepest secrets
to their faceted surfaces

(eg. the state
of your psyche, regardless of stymying
ethics preventing your profits, etc.).

It beats talking to a therapist,
you tell yourself
as you realize
that a counselor would only cost
a fraction of what your precious stones
just ran you at the jeweler’s stand

(and then it dawns on you
that you never left home this morning,
and you’ve been hallucinating
those jewels all this time).

You take the opportunity to sit up in bed,
wishing
that you could at least have some kind of
shiny bauble
to stare at

(cursing
the day that you broke your bedroom window
while throwing your weight
to and fro,
resulting in a cardboard and
duct-taped mess).

———-

First draft posted to WHARVED in 2014

On Good Authority

Mickey The Mantelpiece
has it on good authority
that Dinkins’ Corner
smells like hot dog water
and scorched sand
after the bungled boogaloo last Tuesday.
It’s more than likely
a result of that notorious
Basketweaving Barrelmuncher Brigade–
they usually leave a lasting impression
in this naïve neighborhood.

The Brigade, forever unsure of its tenuous future,
kept right on hoarding canned meats
like it was going out of style–
ever since we thought we’d licked
those midcentury wartime tendencies.

Never an organization keen on listening to reason,
the BBB (not to be mistaken
with the power-wielding force
that calls the local business shots)
must have leaked some spiced ham remnants
while making their hasty getaway
from the street that birthed their tendencies.

We’re gonna need to hold them responsible
for the odorous hullabaloo
they always leave in their sloppy wake
(as though they think we’re meek enough
to take it lying down, the cretins).
Mickey The Mantelpiece will head up the posse.

Not Uncommon

Jemblatrons squeeze through the tetrahedra
as though mall cops have some kind of a stake
in all of this.
It’s not uncommon
to see such a prairie-headed analogy
encompassing the flight of the larcenous
concord penguin, be the bird yella or gold,
kite-running or otherwise.
Whether or not we align ourselves
to this illustrious ancient practice
has little to do with our blood sugar content,
though many shallow-ended participants
profess prediabetic plight.

Magnum Opus

Well, seeing as I dumped the chicken wire for some crumb pastries, you can understand why my rumbling tum-tum began composing a symphony of sorts (an “ode to shortcrust” or some such), bewildering all sentient beings within a 50-foot radius.

Once I’d managed to trudge my way to the dreaded (oft-forgotten) lion cage, I immediately began questioning why I got rid of that infernal chicken wire in the first place. Clearly these lions would have had a perfectly good use for it (as far as I could see). In attempting to save face, I apologized to the few lions I saw. They didn’t know why I was apologizing. I began to explain the whole chicken wire predicament to them, but decided against insinuating that something designed for puny domestic fowl would be suitable for the kings of the jungle. Dejected, I tossed them my crumb pastries and walked away, my stomach continuing its magnum opus unopposed.

Ducksnort

Why do we always gravitate toward senseless tragedy when we should already know how that train wreck’s going to play out? Seems like quite the schematic for failure, and I want no part in it unless you’re wrapping something in bacon on my behalf.
You’ve known my price for some time, okay? Don’t act so surprised.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah!
So Captain Chilango gave me his cure-all recipe once he’d heard my ducksnort of a chili cook-off success story. He looked me right in the eye and said
“kid, you’ve got potential, but you need to set your sights a little higher than some two-bit cook-off in a two horse town. Go see a movie or two–you’ll get to see the world through a different lens, and maybe learn a thing or two while you’re at it.”
Well, he was certainly right about that. I went and saw my first moving picture, and haven’t looked back ever since. Now I get all my valuable worldly information from the silver screen, to which my wife can attest.

Another Question

Considering how rampant–and frequent–they are elsewhere throughout the universe, I know you’re not really surprised that the chance for any number of phantasmagoric happenstances to play out at this pediatric-leaning syndrome symposium would remain slim to none (as one might say when pressed), right? As we usually observe, the only guarantee at one of these gatherings would be that at least one poor soul is coming away with a scraped knee (left or right is another question).

Hey, haven’t you been here just as long as I have?! I’m having a hard time getting over the bald complacency responsible for such a critical misinterpretation of our most sacred pemmican rulebook! It’s been nigh on six years since that last grand gesture in semantics peppered our idealized fields of vision, and I won’t have this unqualified jabber jockey over here just go on and on about 21st Century-specific chesterfield modulation practices (his favorite spotlight-stealing topic) more than once per full moon, no matter how persuasive he happens to be when the stars come alignin’.

Running Low

Albacore dreams float soundless,
drop to sediment, petrify
and wash up:
broken empty shells
pulverized underfoot,
inflicting wounds at will.

All the lost blood
won’t collect
on the beach,
the sand gulps it and dives
into froth.

Burrowed in muck,
all the ‘O’s and ‘AB’s
reaffirm their common lineages,
summoning up a plume of sanguinary vitality
(luring jerky lurker sharks
near the shore to nip some ‘A+’
from a lazing boogie boarder–
that type’s always running low
for some reason).

———-

Original draft posted to WHARVED on 3/2/12,
entitled #130