As the luster of
velvet evenings
recedes into the bleak corner of an empty
kitchen,
Night-drafts snake through moonlit corridors,
hissing softly
as the whisper of furtive lovers,
winding
through labyrinths of chair and shelf
till they ascend, diffusing linoleum essences up the lonely
stairs.
The cat's gone nuts again,
skittering after the phantoms
of white mice
whose cloud-borne feet patter leaf-rhythms
scored for autumn dances.
She's singing again,
far beyond the fog-bound harbor
where halogen lamps
knife the air like
light-sabres.
An aria rises like a fountain of ice,
scattering crystalline shards into the wistful
realms of the temporarily deceased.
That look!
Oh!
That tender look!
The moon is a drunken seraph
strumming mandolins for bleary-eyed
travelers.
She is there, too,
a blue, spherical kiss,
orb of disembodied,
luminous passion.
A sun burst in my thigh.
Electric rabbit hopping,
beating my toy drum,
I felt
the fire ascending
like a sweaty foreman
huffing and wheezing in his sunshine hat,
up the rungs of my pelvis,
clambering hand-over-hand round my vertebrae like a chattering
Flame-Monkey.
My ears beat like twin hearts,
sucking in the dry blood of summer noons.
I flailed like a stoned polyp,
shouting like a panzer-battalion leader;
and I heard the sounds of bass-drums
double-pedaling staccato cataclysms
threatening flood and lightning.
My name!
My other name!
Fateful christening sounding off the climax
of solar immolation.
I guess it serves me right:
reading those trashy novels,
inviting leering devils
to waltz and foxtrot in the balmy
den of my eye-sockets.
It happens to the best of us
and the worst...
Your eyes
are like Skittles,
gaze ripe with citrus gaiety. When you
tell me I'm an insensitive asshole
I tremble like the cirrus down
weaving through the blue cathedral
of a Midwest morning,
tingling,
like I just ate 12 Atomic Fireball jawbreakers.
You are lovely as you
whack me with a Grolsch bottle.
"My God!
It's full of stars!"
As the sounds of Sarah Vaughan
enjoin the world to the hushed silence of a jazz-lounge
where patrons barely murmur as they
sip their chardonays,
and the faint tittering of glasses
punctuates the soulful windows of solitude
that open out between snare-beats,
my spirit falls silent,
enrapt, for the moment, in the scent
of your time of the month.
We move like dervishes,
mongoose and cobra awakening their ancient choreography,
our thoughts parables of petulance,
our words gathered like stones from a quarry of
infernal wit.
I love you too, dear.
Dark noon...
Skull-bearing
truck of doom
descends like a chariot of Hades,
wheel-blades scything the air in whistling vertigo
patterns,
upon her downy back.
Fluffy is dead!
She barketh nae mehr.
Ach! Like the snuffing of quasars in the East,
Fluffy's heart is stilled by the tread of
rubber-shod juggernauts.
A stone rolls in the driveway:
grey, misshapen thing
pecked at by crows.
Stirrings under the house
recall the dank drear of Roman catacombs.
I shudder
searching for hidden lanterns
in the dark recesses of the front porch,
and it returns:
the terrible image of the night
when my roommate choked on a kumquat.
But the house is empty,
newspapers strewn all over the living room.
A distant faint rustle
announces the dying struggle
of an ant caught in the kitchen waste-basket.
Ah life!
I sigh.
We are like ants:
sad, humble ants,
straining our little backs to carry a leaf
home to the nest
where the queen complains
we're always working and never spend time with
the family,
and
"I didn't just clean the carpet so you could track
mud all over it!"
But you, Fluffy!
Ah!
Poor, decomposing, obliterated
Fluffy!
The earth is a great, bony dragon;
The cosmos
an anvil to the hammering of dying stars.
You are gone
with a whimper
trailing off into stygian cisterns of Night.
And the Lamb says...
B a a a
B a a a a
B a a a a d!
as I entrust him with my sacred songs.
I cannot fault him entirely as I
thumb through my Betty Crocker cookbook
pausing to consider a recipe for mutton pie.
(Worthy is the Lamb
that gave its leg to me.)
The world is old.
War is hell. Work
can be alright.
"The neighbors aren't really all that bad."
I say quietly to myself
as the vernal wind
hums a tender rhapsody
to the new green tenements of ripening cornfields.
Let's make the most of what we have.
Talent abounds even in the most
hopeless of idiots.
Sum fokes rite reel good.
Others...
Well...
Darts is a skill, ain't it?
and the means of expression are as manifold
as the rude drivers who never use their turn signals.
One day
when the aliens come,
and we wolf down our cyanide Jello,
and are delivered henceforth to a higher plane,
the Grand Ooga-Thnik-Nok-Par will assemble us all
under an octagonal, lavender tent,
and invite us to expound on our experiences
in this world.
When he asks me,
I will simply tell him:
"Metallica is awesome,
dude!"
George Chadderdon © 2000