WHARVED

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.

Insistent Lights – 20:00GMT

Obtrusive flickers on sultry skies–
who makes them, and what’s the deal?
A thread can weave a coat,
a person can build a library,
a consciousness can dismantle matter.

So, why the insistent lights?
It feels like a plea for alliance.
Are we meeting up with our cosmic brethren
once and forever? What will it take
to bring our existence to the galactic standard?

Disengage distractions devised to disrupt
the true creative process–fragment output
and label it in as many ways as possible
without waxing trivial.

Choices dissolve ambition and the joy of making.
Then time comes in, the ultimate limiter
of consistency and connectivity.

However minute everything may seem,
there may likely be reasoning
behind even the most pointless roadblocks.
GO TO BED
is what the oppressor tells its obedient tenants.

I really wish I could use my arms.
I always wake upon the wrong side of the floor.

Thursday Aficionado – 17:56GMT

Caroline is a Thursday aficionado, never much cared for what the rest of the week has to offer. Caroline is a Thursday aficionado, decided that if she needed to devote a day to merriment, the somewhat transitionary day near the end of the week would suffice. Caroline is a Thursday aficionado, and in the near future, she’ll take her love of Day 5 into the high school classroom. She plans to bring cake doughnuts (just dry enough) for her improving students, with the promise of sprinkles if they ace the next quiz. Caroline is a Thursday aficionado who hopes those damn kids will volunteer to receive a decent education through incentivized sugar doling. Perhaps they’ll even find a fondness for Thursday that they never knew was there.

I really wish I could remember anything I’m saying here. Maybe they’re listening. I doubt it.
My nose itches.

Indiscriminate Minds – 06:37GMT

Indiscriminate minds
mold old pita bread
while extolling the intricacies
depicted in The Lorax–
just as a matter of fact.

No time like the present–built into
the inscrutable molting pattern–
for a splash in the unsalvageable
concrete turnstile lifestyle,
no matter what our compatriots
might mouth in opposition.

Hell, you could go for a while
without betraying anybody’s trust,
and wouldn’t that just be neat?
That would mean that you’d deserve
to be on your best friend’s right shoulder
while he reads his vows
on a sacred summer afternoon.

Indiscriminate minds
hold old cheetah breath
in the highest of all esteem–
and esteem-related sincerity–
while plunging obliquely
through the ever-stacked ideology
touted as ne’er-do-well yodeling.

I really wish they’d loosen this jacket,
whoever they are. It’s cutting off circulation.

Oblivion – 15:51GMT

Did you think the world would end?

I’m regretting that I ended up in here;
can’t read or write or draw.

Yesterday (it feels like yesterday)
I detected a 6% chance of oblivion
coming on, like a light precipitation
stalled by the height of the clouds.

Were it to have more gravity,
a poor excuse for brevity,
I do genuinely feel like the world
would have stood a chance to–at least–
become toast, a crispy roach’s paradise.

But as it stands now, every day
of our consumption
is another plastic nail
in the coffin of our lovely carelessness.

I really wish I could use my arms.

Grooves – 14:41GMT

Dig the grooves–
fixate raw emotion;
orange teleprompters stimulate senses,
falling down through the psyche.
Pen failings, orangeness
essential in the plunge
to crusty bits of exploded massacres
amongst the windfalls of intoxicating merriment
all boiled down to one endeavor
at one single point in time,
hopscotching on the lines of external graphics.
Internalized choosing–who’s choosing?
Everyone’s choosing! How are we to progress,
we beings,
when we always hark back to the past
and fling names, earthbound, flattening.
Not in the air, not in a museum.

I really wish I could use my arms.
Scratching my head on the walls just won’t cut it.