WHARVED

Process

Electric moments
differentiate themselves
from Charlie Horse elements of surprise
through grand gestures
intended mainly for shock value
and spittoon frustration,
not to be confused
with unheralded slow drip processes
destined to overtake the freeways
one coffee at a time,
one donut after another
suffocating for the sake of
a cop’s unruly dipping tradition.

Kempt or unkempt
is the consideration we need to make here–
I can’t have unqualified gemelli salesmen
coming up to me on the street
and forfeiting their right
to above average bone china,
or I’ll take their bowties
and process them into the county,
where folks don’t take too kindly
to neck adornments of any kind,
let alone the type that dictate
how dapper a man can be
while coordinating his daily rituals
of squash in the rec center
named after his great uncle.

What Comes Next?

The floundering tapestry merchant scrapes his knee on the palm tree he’s come to take for granted since moving to Tampa. As blood begins pooling, he ponders if this will mean his end–as a tapestry merchant, sure, but perhaps also as a living organism, once free to scrape his knee wherever he so chose. But no longer. In earlier times he’d have easily become infected, luring death ever closer with his septic charms. How romantic, he thinks, to live in a time of no antibiotics, teetering between states of consciousness, vulnerable to roaming apex predators, begging kin to keep his fire burning instead of fending for themselves.

Standing there in the shade, the pain has already subsided, blood no longer rushing to cover the wound; just another in a long line of false alarms. Now he can get back to fretting over his inevitable bankruptcy and extended stay under a viaduct.

Eggheads

Inward-flowing trigonometrists burgle
fine-toothed angle pushers on
the twentieth day of their self-imposed
exile from the land of mathematics.

Nowhere near the crime is there
a scrap of linen, the trademark of the
now oft-emulated original perpetrators.
The copycats don’t seem to mind
perpetuating the need for a police state,
it’s likely that their cheetah-spritzing
skills never allowed them to make it
to the big time, so they fell back on math
and edgy felonies to fill their days.

When will these damn academics learn
that intellectual proficiency negates
the need for flashy feats of daring?
Perhaps the observation of the next
full solar eclipse will convince some
wayward eggheads to stick to the sciences.
For God’s sake, let’s hope that’s the case.

Communities

Harsh indiscretions ring true
when skipped like stones
across cooling lava
until they sink into the molten rock.

“My windmill powers all of Northern Arkansas,
and I can prove it! Just drive
across the state (east to west)
and stop by every gas station you come across.
Kindly tell the attendant that Stanley F.
sent you to examine their power meter,
and they’ll gladly show you around the place.

“If they pretend not to know
what you’re talking about, that’s because
I’ve made an arrangement with the owner,
who likely hasn’t brought it up with their employees.

“If the attendant claims they’re also the owner,
get out of there right away. Chances are
they overthrew the previous owner
in a fit of violence after an argument
having to do with philosophical differences
as to how the town should be run.

“In the smaller communities, the gas station owner
also often holds public office, and you sure as hell
don’t want to get caught up in that whole
dog and pony show. Now, if you’ll excuse me,
I need to get back to my horse;
he’s been real morose lately, especially
if I leave him alone for more than ten minutes.”

A wild goose chase across the heartland
will yield only ambiguous notions of what power does
to impressionable and civic-minded individuals.

Outdone

The asiago bagel lamprey is my nuisance of choice for the moment, the epitome of a rational raptor transgression through a commencement that lasts longer than the first half-life of a carbon isotope.

In the best of all guest house rupee movements, flower stagnation cements the freelance settler in place, one foot frozen, hovering above the ground for seventeen hours of the most brutal self-reflection known to man.

Not to be outdone, maudelin backpackers heave their chests toward the sky whilst sampling imported mangrove root on a whim.

Anonymous in Chicago

Stellar calligraphy adorns a battered page
that once belonged to a fastidious girl’s journal.
The loose leaf flits about
the intersection of Halsted and Lake,
dancing above and below cars as they pass by.
I risk life and limb——
actually, I just grab it as I go through the crosswalk——
and hold it up with both hands like a scroll.

It reads: To anyone who’s reading this, don’t act like you’ve found something special. I practice calligraphy at least twice a week and scrap the page when I’m done. You are holding Calligraphy Practice Page #46. The first 45 have all met the same fate as this one. Only time will tell if this or any other of these will be read at all. This may very well be an exercise in futility, if you don’t take into account all the hours of calligraphy practice I’ve been afforded. Doesn’t this script look good? It sure is a hell of an improvement from Page #1, and almost imperceptibly better than #45. I’ve scattered these pages across the city, so good luck finding other ones for the purpose of charting the improvements in penmanship.

Yours truly,

-Anonymous

Quartz

Tenderloin scruples
dust our tenacious otter friends
all the way through the tendrils of paradise,
slipping under starved mineral formations
long enough to glimpse the hooey
etched on their facets
by a possessed quartz fragment.

Five for a dollar in this flea market,
shards of landscaping quartz
may not be used for the backyard
(at least according to the stand owner,
who had a fateful brush with the spirits
while trespassing on a millionaire’s garden property
and now prefers to leave out the horrid details).