Jimbo handles the hammer as though he’d been meant to take on such responsibilities before he was even born. Of course, this is a preposterous notion. No human is predestined to wield implements created by other humans in a bygone era, at least not evolutionarily so. But try telling that to Jimbo as he pounds those nails into the linoleum. The fluid motion he successfully demonstrates on nail after superfluous nail just proves how our species has throttled survival of the fittest. The floor doesn’t even need any nails pounded into it today (or any other day for that matter), but that doesn’t stop Jimbo from banging away. Logic will only get you so far in a world this mad. How can a person be faulted for performing the task his hands and sweaty brow demand? Besides, once the hammering is complete, Jimbo will set up an intricate web of twine trip wire designed to upend even the sneakiest of midnight fridge robbers. “No more,” says Jim to himself as he mindlessly pulverizes nail after vindicating nail. “No more rat bastards taking my bread pudding.”
The Whole Kit ‘n’ Caboodle
NaPoWriMo 2015 — III: Rampart Peddler; The Sleazy Details
Step on it, rampart peddler.
You may have the acuity to build a company like this
from the ground-up, but I can see how you’re pulling those strings.
You don’t have to tell me to keep quiet, mister.
All you need to do is grease the wheels of justice,
and I’ll be rolling my way out of your sordid affairs.
How much will it cost you to keep me on your side?
Well?
You’re clearly more creative than I am in these matters,
so I’ll let you figure out the sleazy details.
Seven thousand dollars and a year’s supply of Playboys?
Okay, I’m listening.
NaPoWriMo 2015 — II: Bubbling Babblers
Who even much cares for
rudimentary road maps and hackery
imported from the minds of drudgenous drones?
Refinement falls to the critics, does it?
You put something out and get an issue in return,
to be repeated ad infinitum
for the good of the paying public
and the pauper poet.
Filth–
perpetrated by years of aching bellies
and glowering doom receptacles
we’ve come to know as the media–
you, Filth, are responsible
for the illiterate cauldronful of bubbling babblers
that belittle each other every chance they get.
NaPoWriMo 2015 — I: The Swallow
Near and dear to our trough and crest wavelength
sits a swallow of indeterminate proportion
(likely due to a lack of perspective).
It coos the way only a swallow can,
taking all of its learning into account—
that’s right, all twenty-seven hours and sixteen minutes
of learning administered by its very own mother
before unexpectedly losing nest privileges.
Every note tinged with sorrow
for losing its childhood home,
the swallow innately understands
that tragedy begets beauty. So it belts.
It takes all the air it can possibly pull
into its feathery balloon body
and churns it into the equivalent of church,
every chance it gets.
It sings along with everything it hears,
understanding the whirr and the hum
of all life around it.
It nestles between the blankets of noise
it’s always encountering, placing harmony in chaos.
Few swallows have been given
the gift of self-awareness,
and this one dreams of being a performer.
Every day it sits on a wire by itself
in a crowded urban-industrial area
for the sole purpose of chasing away its demons
with interactive improvisation. And damn, is it good.
Overconsumption and Overcompensation
The sugar packet parlor gleamed with artificial charm
in the dull summer haze we call liberty.
Somewhere, somehow, someone knows a better way
to portion sugar.
Today, however,
nobody made an effort to explain the intricacies
of our package-centric society,
the landfill-clogging generation
content to leverage children
for bleach bottles.
Doesn’t nature have its own ingenious packaging
already set in motion?
We obtained our paper and plastic
from butchering the landscape and its inhabitants
and dumping their carcasses into vast piles
of
overconsumption
and overcompensation
for our lacking wits.
The Clown Says “Hey
An elephant walks into a clown
at the grocery store.
The clown says “Hey Donnie,
ya just broke a rib.”
The elephant says “No, I’m fine.
You’d better get that nose checked out, though.”
Sorry, Crowface
Stitch witch Fernandez, folly smell polly otter britches for the love of how many lost sailors in the sea of temerity and sometimes regretful lust? Who doesn’t associate sailors with regretful lust these days anyway? Those poor ladies and gents take a pill and forget their troubled soda fountain fantasies, being king and queen at the prom, being king and queen at the prison camp, being king and queen at nothing at all. But they must tell themselves they are king and queen at everything in particular, or the PTSD will sink in, groaning bottlecaps of philosophy until there’s nothing left to them and to all their dedicated brethren, shackled to jingle bell fury (not unlike bongo fury, just around the Winter months with tinsel). Oh, those poor intrepid wanderers of the human invertebrate psyche, those who develop thoughts according to their predestiny, their density assured for at least three tours of duty. And nobody cares anyway. They’re all wondering how they can somehow stand out amongst the other clowns, the sick practitioners of boredom for aesthetics’ sake, those poor intrepid sailors who think they’re taking life by the horns; they don’t understand.
What? Oh, nothing. I was just sharpening a shoehorn and calling it my mother. Move along, nothing to see here, crowface. I’m sorry, crowface is insensitive. Raven countenance suits you better? Okay, I’ll remember that from now on.
WHARVED 