WHARVED

Belgians – 10:28GMT

What in the hell? I don’t know where all these Belgians came from. I know somebody dared somebody else at some point, but it’s possible we’ll never know for sure. Am I perturbed by that? I suppose, perhaps a little. But I won’t grow as a person if I spend all my time wondering whether or not a bunch of infernal Belgians belong in this picture. They have a right, like any other ethnic group, to be included in this narrative, and even serve a prominent role! But they won’t. See, this piece doesn’t incorporate a single Belgian. No people, chocolate, beer, or even waffles from that place.

So you can understand my mortification surrounding the inclusion of these here Belgians. I’m so ruffled that I haven’t even bothered to count them. Did they get here on a tour bus? I just saw them milling around on the corner with no real idea of where they are or how they got there. Is this some sort of elaborate prank? I’d go up and talk to one, but then I’d open up the floodgates for every Belgian in the tri-city area! This is tragic. I wonder if they speak English. All Europeans do, don’t they? Is that racist? Culturist? Maybe they’re not even Belgian, hell.

Where does the ceiling start?
How long has it been now?
I really wish I could use my arms.

Toadstool Billy – 05:04GMT

I really wish I could use my arms. Oh well…

Toss that fence somewhere else, Toadstool Billy–we don’t mean to harm you at all, honest! We love watching your antics and learning from your sporadic lectures, even if they come bursting into our living rooms in the middle of the night. We understand that your schedule is more nocturnal than ours, so Shelly and I are more than happy to leave a voice recorder in said living room for any extended lecturing you’d like to conduct during our sleep cycles. We really do love learning about your outlook on life, cheery or blustery. Your perspective never ceases to dazzle us with unexplored insight and colorful anecdotes, and we’re grateful to have met you.

Before we forget to ask–have you made any appearances in the neighbors’ houses? If so, have they responded kindly, or have they regarded you as more of a nuisance? We think that most other people on this block really have no appreciation for the supernatural, but we can’t be sure when the only times we interact with our neighbors are during social functions (barbecues, keggers, raves, seances, etc.) where saving face is preferable [and indeed necessary] if we’re to continue living such extraordinarily social lives.

To be honest with you, Shelly and I are very paranoid people in general. We just can’t leave well enough alone.

Sometimes I do miss people.
My foot itches.

Insomuch – 18:18GMT

We take with us all matter of things, insomuch as it stands to be ever an incher of pincher cinchers, where schnitzel bricks spend all-day expeditions of exquisite daydream clamfaces–by the cola machine is where our lord takes his things. Bitter nut jobs make extraordinary leaps through our galaxy, but never when you have an economy rooted in capitalism, that dollar ever-chained to something way older than our collective responsibilities and squared up to a door we must have forgotten like a stamp mailed on a letter to the dentist some Tuesday back in December when the weather was much nicer but the days were much shorter and you sure as hell don’t miss that one bit, as goddamn cold as it may be right now, god dammit. I really wish I could use my arms.

Systematic – 07:22GMT

Heaven-bent for suicide and lifted from a promissory life, I spent my passion undermining solitary refuge as a systematic impulse-follower.

She said to me, “listen son, I’ve gotta tell you something you may not wanna hear. I ate that last piece of taffy you had saved up, and it was glorious. I know you were planning to give it to your grandma next week, but guess what? Now we’re even. Don’t you go around promising me trips to Hawaii anymore, you arrogant prick. Just because I birthed you doesn’t mean I need to be your friend. Fuck those stereotypes. Now are you staying for dinner or aren’t you?”

Is that all I am? A systematic impulse-follower? I can paint over my stripes, but it’ll chip off and reveal my ugly nature before too long.

I miss having the option to chew my food.
I really wish I could use my arms, too. Fork, knife, the whole deal.
Maybe I crossed too many people to be a free man.

Scrounging – 22:19GMT

Tan bird on a moonlit knife, scrounging for what seems like confidence or at least a shillelagh to the scapular. Fiddle faddle addles paddle rattles with a temper-mounting groin strategy. Blistering topology steps on a wounded grape, howling towards nothing in specific, tunneling through yankee skulls.

Heather squelching underfoot, we feel bound to our destination, knowing full well it’s spur of the moment. “To the octagonal pumpkin” we staccato through paper bags, this October much drier than usual. The tendency seems to be that of corn flakes crunching their torturers, gaining temporary power.

Every year gives the tenth month 31 days, a chance to bleed infamy, only to sum up with princess-themed classrooms. I’ve always wished that fate were less cruel to the vast majority of the world’s struggling wanderers.

I’ve taken 1,515 steps today, possibly 1,516, walking in place up against the squishy wall.
I really wish I could use my arms.

Check Check, Test Test

Wow, this recent sequence of events is quite a roller coaster ride of rediscovery and contemplation as an artist. All those times–hundreds–that I doubted why I was putting in the time, I was incapable of seeing the bigger picture. And now that I’ve glimpsed a larger scheme of things, I can also understand that I’ll never see the entire picture. My senses limit that panoply.

But that’s okay! I can make do with what I’ve got, and make it as colorful as possible.

My Straitjacket series, as you may have noticed, is the driving force behind this particular reinvigoration.

I’m going to post dozens of these Straitjacket poems, all named a particular time of day, Greenwich Mean Time. There are 1,440 possible titles for this series, if you consider the different combinations of digits that represent particular periods in time (however ambiguous).

The older me would have let that overwhelm him, likely thinking about that 1,440 number as a challenge to WRITE 1,440 POEMS FOR THE SERIES. Anything less would have been a letdown.

Fortunately, my thought processes are much healthier these days, and I’m just taking it one poem at a time.

The speaker in these poems is… a man in a straitjacket. He’s in a rubber room, doesn’t know how he got there. Time is static in this environment, and sensory deprivation is opening up new ways of thought for him. As time progresses, he becomes more and more comfortable with his purest expressions, abandoning the inner critic that always told him he wasn’t good enough, and that he’d just end up selling used cars out of an auto mechanic’s garage (well, not exactly in the garage–it’s out back, Gus owns the adjacent lot and decided one day to supplement his income by buying fixer-uppers and flipping them for tidy profits).

Taking the idea of audience out of the equation for the speaker is sublime and freeing, I can do whatever I want with words under the umbrella of absurdity and non-sequitur, legitimized through a unified theme.

So I reckon that’s about it for now. Just wanted to check in, let you know that I’m happily creating. Perhaps, in the near future, an upgrade will come my way. Some kind of monetization. Perchance a book or booksss? That’s my hope, eh? Just need to figure out how to self-publish printed materials and reach the widest possible audience.

Cheers, mates!

-Aidan

The Eggplant – 06:46GMT

Have you spoken
with our friend,
the eggplant?
The little feller
wants to keep us
in the know.
He’s purple
and he’s porous,
he told me
he’s a taurus,
but really wants
to be a buffalo.

Have you spoken
with our friend,
the eggplant?
He’s taking a bath,
I wouldn’t
disturb him
now.
He loves his fire power,
can’t afford to shower,
if he could stand upright
he’d operate a plow.

Have you spoken
with our friend,
the eggplant?
His chèvre queso friend
found a home in the bend
just across the highway
from that really good Wendy’s.

I really wish I could use my arms.