there’s refuge in absurdity
in life won’t do your bidding:
perhaps it’s all a joke and when
you die, god’s like, “just kidding.”
there’s refuge in uncertainty
in reign that gets us wetter
evaporative schooling says
in dry voice soon be better.
but what the hay and collie chi
it sucks to be a refugee.
On Everything Road someone stuck a giant spoon in me
I was, honestly, bestirred
Extracting the spoon, I gripped it, weaponized it, stirred things up
Waving the spoon through the body of an approaching prostitute, I gave her the face and demeanor of Meryl Streep
She thanked me and said she always wanted to be a Streepwalker
And at the intersection of Everything and Trapezoid Circle
The light turned purple and the pedestrian sign said both DONT WALK and RUN!!
And the cars hopped on their tires instead of rolling
And I hopped too when I tried to walk and was able to bound over the cars like I was jumping over pieces in checkers
People pointed at me and laughed and I looked down and found that I was dressed as a carhop
The light turned mauve and the cars turned to cages with odd creatures inside wearing buttons saying I AM A ZOID
And I thought, Well, that is one way to trap a Zoid
But then all the cages disappeared
And in the middle of the intersection was a gigantic piece of lemon meringue pie
And it looked gloriously delicious and I still wielded my giant spoon
So with one last mega-hop I bounded right into its fluffy center
But as the spoon touched the meringue the harangued meringue changed in color from snow-white to slurpee blue
And the pale-yellow filling turned to hooker’s green
I licked the pie-clumped spoon edge and it still tasted like pie
But something in either the danged meringue or the unwilling filling transformed me into an enormous bullfrog
Still wearing a carhop’s uniform
Except with a cowboy hat with tassels
And the magic spoon disappeared
And I thought, What could be worse??
Then found out I couldn’t hop anymore
So I bullfrog-trudged down Everything Road in my carhop uniform with the long tassels hitting me annoyingly in the face with every trudge and weird-colored giant pie residue all over me
And tried to hop again and couldn’t
And shrugged as best a bullfrog could and said croakingly Well,
At least this story has a moral:
The ultimate absurdity of the Universe
Knows no bounds.
if only the girl in the song were real/and the boy were me
she would be a california girl with a mild southern accent/and i would have surfed from an early age/and met her on a bright summer afternoon on the beach
and i would have a vw bug and legs almost too long for it/and she would say I was lanky
and we ate a lot of ice cream but stayed skinny by burning calories surfing and running miles and miles on the sand and making out after taking showers
and we got picked to be the first shipload of settlers on the first moon colony where there would be no surfing but plenty of flying with strapped-on wings and tail assemblies
and–whoops, the song is over
wow, what a song/really took me places
here I am a seventy-year-old man with stubby legs again
yearning for what can never be
but maybe there’s a woman out there, a woman my age, for whom leg-stubbiness is not a significant factor in the selection of a companion
who wants to be a landlocked surfer girl
with some occasional barefoot-on-the-sand interludes
time and patience will tell
and hearing that song
Moe missed his or her or their friend.
They had excursed in shared dream bubbles
And danced a labyrinth formed of a snake of near-infinite length
And had their passports stamped in principalities where it was impossible not to belong.
One horrid day though
Moe’s friend asked to express their friendship with a name change
And became Eom,
Thinking they would reflect,
Would harmonize;
But a cruel hit-and-run spirit told the two
That due to Eom standing for End of Month
Their friendship would end at midnight
Three days hence.
Over those days Eom transformed
Into an Aleppo Pine tree,
All but their mouth
Which lamented, “O! I am losing you. I am losing our memories. Where have
Adventures Six and Seventeen Gone??”
And that last day
Eom’s voice became ropy
With emotive sapdrops
And right before the bells of Midnight tolled
She wrestled out “Farewell, beloved…”
And her mouth barked and hardened.
Moe was inconsolable.
Her friend had pined away.
From the website’s prompt: “Today, try writing a poem that imposes a particular song on a place. Describe the interaction between the place and the music using references to a plant and, if possible, incorporate a quotation – bonus points for using a piece of everyday, overheard language.”
East on Thomas, North on Western Civilization Going South
Walking on the sidewalk on the north side of Thomas Road/Heading east toward the Sonic/Where I’ll order the #13 medium, tots,/Diet Coke plus a corn dog with three mustard packets,/”Flight of the Bumblebee” starts playing in my head
There are no bumblebees here/But there are bicyclists far outnumbering the pedestrians/Who out-of-nowhere insistently materialize from the gloom between streetlights/And somehow connote the threat of a swarm of bees
And somehow spark the memory of a thirsty four-mile hike/Up to the base of Piestewa Peak/Where I knew a blessedly coldwater drinking fountain awaited/To cure my early-June dehydration/But when I arrived at that oasis/I found it to be jealously guarded by honeybees/Who inexplicably preferred the cold metallic sterile drip-puddle/To the lively nectar of lantana and cactus blossoms
And the rumor of aggressive Africanized bees from way back danced in my vivid imagination/And fueled my cowardice/And, thwarted, I turned my back on the mountain I had intended to climb/And rubber-leggedly made my way to the nearest convenience store/There to buy a large bottle of the appropriately-named Lifewater
Yes, these cyclists vibed a similar menace/And I flinched and dodged ineffectually as they zoomed past
Then as I passed a bus stop/Where idlers with blankets and a shopping cart with oddments were chatting/I heard a hate-filled young woman’s voice say/…and it turns out my FUCKING husband had been texting her all along…
And it was as if stage-scrims of scenes from Armageddon/Lit up above the gloomy sidewalk/And they featured the mysterious death of bees/The uncaring wheeled hordes/The disenfranchisement of multitudes so recently compelled to sleep at bus stops/My own complicity in buying products packaged in environment-damaging plastic
And I wondered as I walked/How long the fragile embroidery/Of this our civilization/Would hold
And “The Flight of the Bumblebee” played on in an endless loop as I walked…
an “administrative error” booted a man out
but this mistake is not going to be set right
not if he has his way
.
last time round he was like
“hey, obama got to kill a guy”
“i wanna kill a guy”
and so one of iran’s military heroes
was droned out of existence
.
he partners with a murderer of a journalist
and now phil mickelson
has golfed for murderers
and taken their blood money
.
tariffs and drone strikes and bribes
o my
stock market insider trades o my
warrantless immigrant raids o my
having his way with us all o my
.
boys and their toys
make mayhem and noise
some never grow up
some never feel guilty
.
did you vote for him?
you are either sorry or not sorry
if you are sorry renounce him
reduce his crowd size
he is powerless without his mob
cease to be his mob
.
if you are not sorry
then you are beyond redemption
and i invite you to go to hell
where you will fit right in
You put clean sodabottle lip to yours and tilt.
You send a soda cascade over your tongue
And soda froths through your throat
Sudsing, that soda, with your epiglottal pulse
The soda-fizz harder to accommodate
Till at least you end the carbonated cascade.
(From the website’s prompt for day 14: “Today, try writing a poem that describes a place, particularly in terms of the animals, plants or other natural phenomena there. Sink into the sound of your location, and use a conversational tone. Incorporate slant rhymes (near or off-rhymes, like ‘angle’ and ‘flamenco’) into your poem. And for an extra challenge – don’t reference birds or birdsong!”)
buzzed
rumor has it that horny cicadas/have a cacophonous periodicity/doing the buzzbuzzbuzzmate deed as/cyclewax fills, and in this vicinity
all around me the hereiamfuckme bugs/meet their seventeen-year obligation/shedding skins as their synthesized noisymoogs/vibrate like crazy in arthropod nowpassion
not too romantic to my human taste you see/but different strokes, different folkcritters, yes?/their peculiar frequency mastery/gets exempted from cutesy-poo spattermess.
Thor had red hair long ago/And a beard/And a boy companion named Thialfi/And he drank so much ocean the tide ebbed/Not noticing his beer was actually seawater
Millennia later Stan Lee came along/Having co-created superheroes and having space to fill in the monster-genre comic Journey Into Mystery/He told his brother Larry to bring thunder god Thor into the fold/And Larry and Jack “King” Kirby concocted a myth of a myth/Turning timid but worthy Dr. Don Blake into the hammer-wielding blonde prettyboy Thor/And with the hammer BlakeSlashThor discouraged some rockpile-looking invaders from Saturn from conquering the Earth
Silly though this may seem/A not-even-mint copy of Journey Into Mystery #83 is now on sale on eBay/With an asking price of $39,500.00 US
(But hey–free shipping)
And Thor became the stuff of new legends
And is now featured in several movies
But the Marvel Cinematic Universe retrofit the Thor legend to mostly ditch Dr. Don Blake and turn Jane Foster from Blake’s decorative, pining nurse to a kickass scientist specializing in weird energies
So there’s now a myth of a myth of a myth
Please look into it if you haven’t
You don’t want to myth out
the pendulous metal
hangs above and back of the stage
suspended by cord in fine fettle
near the beast slash geek cage
.
feast days death days sometimes for a war
sometimes for the birth of a princess
from a lair in a hill out a paneled corridor
comes the hareskin-covered hammer that convinces
.
and the wielder slabbily muscled lumbers
up the stonehewn steps
with a swing she unencumbers
sports and demons from the depths
.
and the hillfolk scream and scurry
at the liquid majestic sound
and to the stage they hurry
where awaits the Darkness-gowned
.
and the wielder holds her hammer high
and scans the crowd and then
swings and smashes and the Death-Gong
drenches all the throng again.
One with Clay, Image and Text 