WHARVED

The Wharved Connection — Episode 2

Hey there! It’s time once again for The Wharved Connection!

This episode features work from Summer of 2016, and includes:
Lake Uponamawoc
Biff and Buffy
Pinto
Interstellar Reception Hall

The poems are below if you wish to read along.

Lake Uponamawoc

Handier than a set of dull steak knives
and more buoyant than the Duke of Edinburgh,
this here dog in a box is a celebration
of festive times past. Since the dawn
of our current set of circumstances,
nothing has refreshed one’s sense of dignity
more than the knowledge of a particular
string of extraterrestrial occurrences
up over by Lake Uponamawoc–if they’re
to be believed. The results of these
alien encounters are apparent: dogs-in-boxes
are popping up all across the tri-county area,
the calling cards of our benevolent overlords
from the other end of the galaxy. Nobody
knows when this started, but spiritual channelers
have often said this practice predates
the bronze age by a good margin. Our species
may have first learned of both dogs and boxes
through this bizarre ritual, utterly changing
our impressions of storage and animal friendship.

——

Biff and Buffy

I’m not too troubled
by the humanitarian implications
present in such an occurrence.
I’m more concerned with
how all these ham sandwiches–
half with mustard, half with mayo–
got here in the first place.
Falling from a passing hot air balloon
would be the most plausible explanation,
an airborne picnic that got
too heavy to stay aloft otherwise.

Biff and Buffy Picnicmaker
would have plenty left to snack on anyway
if such a scenario were true.
There would still be enough
hard-boiled eggs, potato salad,
caviar and toast points
to last them through the sunset,
as they’re not big eaters anyway.
They had a sizable breakfast
before taking to the sky,
and the only thing they really
can’t go without would be their urn
of coffee, painstakingly brewed
the day before yet still steaming–
just the way they like it.

——

Pinto

The Sun filters
through canopy leaves
to impose
a tinted pinto pattern
on a utility vehicle—

two-hundred some-odd
horses under the hood,
expecting imminent
metal pedaling—
waiting in July heat

for the concrete cowboy
to unhitch them after sweating
in the noonday Sun
picking up the second load
of dry-cleaning in as many days.

——

Interstellar Reception Hall

While we’re at this interstellar reception hall,
we should take the time to tell all our friends
what we’re doing this for: the peculiar sense
of freedom and wonder that takes off like a goose
through the heron-streaked gates of our overlords,
be they earthly or heavenly. It doesn’t matter
who takes the cake in this tradition, we must
stealthily enlist the help of as many indentured
mandibles as humanly possible, lest we fall into
a holding pattern of nothing in particular–save
plaid or argyle in shirts and socks. We’re all in
the habit of making friends with people who choose
not to know much about our end of the galaxy, and
it’s not much of a turn-on when you come to realize
that nobody really knows much about our end of the galaxy.

The freedom to choose whose friendship we want
is something to be admired, but it comes with a cost:
pepperoni pizza to be consumed by all parties involved
for as long as a grand occasion can be extended. If
pizza isn’t the taste of the day, a number of foods may be
substituted–pita pockets, burgers or even flan for instance.

——

Thanks for tuning in, glad to have you around.

Catch you next time!

-Aidan

The Wharved Connection — Episode 1

Hello there, readers!

I’ve begun to explore the oratory side of poetry, taking pieces I’ve composed over the past several years and breathing life into them with my voice. I’ve been told that my voice does a unique job of making the written word more interesting to the average audience member, so I figured it was about time to give the whole podcast thing a shot.

That all being said, I’ve put together my very first podcast, with four recorded works included. I’ve cobbled together a rudimentary recording that should do the job for the time being. Over time, as I gain skills in the audio engineering department, I’ll be able to offer a more polished product. But as it stands, I simply want to get my spoken words across to you.

The pieces included in this podcast are:
Speculatives
The Widget Farmers
Self-Consciousness
Chicken Wrestler

If these pieces seem new to you, that wouldn’t surprise me. They were all composed in the Summer of 2013. An entire olympics ago, I was penning these poems in the pursuit of continuing my craft and engineering works of literary merit that hadn’t existed anywhere else prior. Looking back at these efforts, I’m happy to say that they still hold a certain amount of intrigue.

You may have noticed that Wrinkled didn’t quite make the cut. These things happen.

Well, enjoy the recording, all eight minutes of it. I expect that most episodes will be anywhere between five and ten minutes, nice bite-size little nuggets for easy consumption.

Cheers, and happy listening!

-Aidan

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.