Bleak Bonus Thursday

If you've completely given up on trying to be cheery today or this year and prefer to wallow in your winter depression, here's a gift for you.

 

 

       walking wounds

scabs on the landscape
      scraping by
  these men-
                      shadows in rags
          drawn grizzled
                          barely sticking
to life       evaporating
                         toward death
        have they lost the skill to live
   or the will to die ?

 
2002

The Other Other Red Meat - Penguin

I'm not sure what to make of today's poem about penguin ranching.  Is that a real thing?  I wonder what penguin tastes like?  I'll bet it's a lot gamey and a little fishy.  Have you ever had bonito in a sushi place?  It's the darkest red fish flesh I know of.  It looks like venison.  Don't penguins eat a lot of krill and small cold water fish?  You would think that their meat would be high in those healthy fish oils.  I suppose some people will be aghast at the idea of eating them because they are cute.  Tell that to Bambi.  Anyway ...  I think the ending is strong.  I like its low tone of murmuring menace and conspiracy.

Someday, Timmy,  there will be computing machines that will allow you to access all the knowledge of the world from your home.  Let's say you want to find a location that is dedicated to evil penguins -- it will be there.  What a brave new world it will be.

 

  

                   the black & the white

They say penguin ranching
has no future.
They are so wrong.

And there’s no vocation that beats it
on glee alone.

It’s a cornucopia of oxymoronic delight.

Where else can
giddy and slaughter mingle easily
in the same sentence?

the tastiness of beef
the healthfulness of mackerel

name another meat source
that’s really fun to play with
before it’s dead

Here in Tierra del Fuego
where the icy oceans mix it up
the wind speaks, they say, but
I say it just blows

at night
it stirs the ’guins:
                                they murmur          and whisper
                                like disgruntled       civil servants
                                asked to work         through their coffee break

I Live in Fear of Food

I thought I might be running out of interesting food poems and then I found this one.  "I Live in Fear of Food" really lays it out clearly for you, like "I Walked with a Zombie" or "Mars Needs Women".   I almost understand the sentiment, since I usually have some fearless mad scientist experiment going on in my kitchen.  I think Blue Oyster Cult would be the perfect soundtrack for this one.  

 

  

                    I Live In Fear of Food     

 
I love those food synthesizers on Star Trek.  
I loathe what’s in my refrigerator.

Not just the It’s Alive yogurt, 
plucky yeast & primordial sour 
dough mix, no, all natural things.

While sleeping I might snore
and some food could jump down my trachea.  
Who knows what its agenda is.

Remember, you can drown
in an inch of water and don’t play
in a refrigerator or plastic bag.

They say any natural substance 
in excess is a poison, even water.

Where there’s life there’s danger, I say.

Natural is the lurking evil,
it hides in purity, clings to life
in the fridge, so if you must sleep, do it sitting 
up against the purring reanimator box or just
sleep in your car.

 
1998

Terrier Mom on Squagels

I don't think that I have ever heard of a squagel before (a square bagel), but I guess I can see the point.  Dining@Large commenter TerrierMom sent me this self-penned interesting bit of verse on the squagel.  Huh, Google Image offers up many squagel pictures.   I need to get out more.  Maybe there are square donuts (squonuts) or triangular pitas.  The world is changing too fast.    I think she writes a little bit like a terrier might - quite snappy.

 

  
     Squagel
 
Square bagel ...
Squagel!
Mutant
Sandwich-ready
Scorned by 
Jewish parents
here you are
melty melty
chewy chewy
square perimeter
hole in the middle
Why the hole?
For what you lost?
Change your shape
Lose your soul

A Scary View of Dim Sum

Yesterday there was a post on Dining@Large about the lack of dim sum places in the Baltimore area.  Maybe that is true.  But would you want to go to this dim sum place?  And could you ever sleep afterwards?  Another disturbing food poem.  Enjoy.  

Dim Sum                                                     

Things are out of place.
Pearl earring in an oyster 
served by a bony waitress 
minus an ear. Big dogs
tied to a flagpole howl
from un-tongued mouths, 
having chewed them in 
error. In a graceless 

Chinese restaurant, a boy wearing one black mitten
brings a dish of Szechuan finger sausages.  

Now Tommy and Maria gnaw on 
fistfuls of barbecue wings.
In the lot behind the Golden Palace
I search my pockets for car keys while
Maria fans her hand to lick at the hidden flavor.

Half-seen in the dusty gravel, five wingless crows with yellowed 
beaks wrestle, hop and roll, scratch and poke for the 
privilege of pecking out our eyes while we dream and digest. 

A View of Hell from Pizza Hut

So I went looking for an interesting pizza poem.  Mostly I found ones where empty pizza boxes were loaded with depressing symbolism.  But then I hit the jackpot.  Enjoy.

 

A View of Hell from Pizza Hut

Searing pizza cheese pain tears into the 
the roof of your mouth the agony she laughs
didn’t “Mitzi” warn you nincompoop she snarls 
and looks far away to Shoe Town ... 

She daydreams her way 
    through rack upon rack
        stacked to the dropped ceiling
            up the aisles of pumps
                tagged floating free fluorescent

        now naked greywhite blobby flesh air-sliding
        over the skins stretched for our non-metric feet

Downtown a man in her 
          day dreaming hops off 
                    with a display shoe 
                              on his one foot

          (in a place where a pair is more costly
          than the silvery gun that “Mitzi” is fondling 
          now thigh-strapped silent rubbing converting 
          rubles to yen for fun in her head)

1992

Not Feelin' Good in the Neighborhood

Could eating in a chain restaurant drive you insane?  I believe that it could based upon this poem.

I want my baby back, baby back, baby back ... Apparently Lisa was a popular name for Chili's waitresses in 1991.  

 

 A Million Lisas (Is Too Many)                                             

  for Lisa                                                      

  What a treat was the
  auburn-haired Lisa that 
  took my order and
  what a nice surprise
  was the fishnet 
  Lisa that doted on the

  croutonicity of my salad.
  After the Is Everything
  OK Heather, I was
  bombarded with a sizzling
  Fajita Lisa and a sidecar
  Lisa-in-training Lisa.
  The satisfaction Heather had
  molted into an Is Your Meal
  OK Lisa and the previous
  Lisas of the Crouton, Fajita,
  et al had organized in
  the lounge, splashing
  around the Exxon
  Super Premium and igniting,
  hand-in-hand: a mega
  circular union of
  Lisa-ness for
  Happy Hour patrons.

  For those who wondered
  what is the critical mass
  of Lisas or Kirstens or
  Ashleys, Christies, Staceys
  or Kellys, the answer
  is nine, at least so says the
  burning ring of Lisas
  in the lounge tonight.
 

© WORDART,  March 1991

 Topic: I love comments

Laura Lee suggested The Nine Muses a series of poems and the painting "Apollo Dancing with the Muses" by Francesco Bartolozzi (1725-1815).  Thank you Laura.

In Praise of Charles Simic

In college I took a writing course with John Barth.   The TA didn't like poetry much so he selected something by Charles Simic called "The Butcher Shop" for us to read.  I didn't like poetry much either and still don't.  But I loved Simic's poem because it showed me that poetry could have power and meaning in unexpected ways.  

 

 

Bartolomeo Passerotti

 

Butcher Shop

Sometimes walking late at night
I stop before a closed butcher shop.
There is a single light in the store
Like the light in which the convict digs his tunnel.

An apron hangs on the hook:
The blood on it smeared into a map
Of the great continents of blood,
The great rivers and oceans of blood.

There are knives that glitter like altars
In a dark church
Where they bring the cripple and the imbecile
To be healed.

There is a wooden block where bones are broken,
Scraped clean– a river dried to its bed
Where I am fed,
Where deep in the night I hear a voice.

-- Charles Simic

 

Another great suggestion from Laura Lee: