It’s so hard to be
a surrealist these days.
For example,

I found myself hanging
upside down outdoors above
a vat of clear liquid.
There was no clue 
as to who
might have been
responsible.

Said to myself, “Gee,
it doesn’t look dangerous,
smells fine, no fire below it,
I don’t see any cooking utensils,
kinda spooky that I’m
hanging here alone 
trussed up like a rug
but all in all, I’ve certainly felt
more threatened
in my life,”

and then to me of course there came
all the obvious references
of failed love and broken threads
among family born and found
and how I have hanged myself
through neglect and anger and how
I must now reach out to save myself. 

The branch holding me
started breaking a little. I was suddenly
a little nervous as
I was running out of metaphors
I might use to keep from drowning
when it failed at last.  Poetry
has its benefits but 
when you’re going to drown,
you’re going to drown.  So,

looking down at the vat, 
wondering why no one was around,
I prepared my last words
though none would hear them,
it still seemed a good idea to scream,

“HEY, HELP!  HELP!!!  
I’M FALLING HERE,
GONNA DROWN,
HELP, HELP!!! THE SILVER
CHALICE BELOW SHALL TAKE ME!
THERE MAY BE LOBSTERS!
HELP, HELP HELP!!!!”

There were no lobsters, dammit.
(Or, alternately, thank God.)
When I fell at last, the pool was so shallow
I flailed about until I was out of it
and managed to loose myself from bondage 
and got away and came here, to this bar.

You ask me, who tied me up?
Let me tell you this: it’s so hard to be
a surrealist these days,

I decided not to pursue the mystery.  
Chances are it was nothing poetic
and probably had to do with unpaid debts
or a gang thing.  It’s always a gang thing,
right?  Unless maybe
I was suspended there for no more reason
than to prompt a poem.  That would be
cool. It’s so hard to be a surrealist these days
that every little bit
helps. This bar helps.  You’re helping
just by listening.

We are in this world together
and I’m tired of it trying to make sense.
If the lobsters can’t derange us,
random acts of meaningless violence 
will have to do. 

(note: all italicized text taken from a single spam message left here on the blog)

“““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““`

It was any exhilaration discovering your website yesterday.

 yesterday I was in fever and unable to speak,
rotten sick from considering my work.
you came and raised me with this praise
into genial confusion.
for this I could kiss you upon
your automated mouth.

I arrived here nowadays hunting new things. I was not necessarily frustrated.

where do you come from?  your address
is obscure to me.  your language seems
torn up a little.  why were you not necessarily 
frustrated?  the frustration you miss is all mine — that is how
the work gets done, scratching at frustration so
it stops itching till the next time it does.  forgive me —
were you seeking that?   why was it necessary
and were you frustrated at all?  or did you take enough
new things, you happy thief? 

Your ideas after new approaches on this thing have been helpful plus an superb assistance to personally.

this thing — you speak of new approaches
as if it were Everest we are speaking of —
a new route from the near side, a reversal
across the hard terrain — I am thrilled that you are
assisted in the ascent, friend.  I am ecstatic, filled with
any exhilaration you may name again, awkwardly.
 
We appreciate you leaving out time to write out these items and then for revealing your thoughts.

how did you know that I had left out time 
while I was writing these things?  did you know
that time spolied?  I was forced to put the sheet
over its face.  then i pulled it back, a little at a time,
revealing not so much my thoughts as the face
of what I had let go to rot.  time, dead on a table,
dead on my desk, the corpse in these words.  it’s why I was
sick when you wrote, sick with the death of time.  it’s why
your message was so timely.  it’s why I look to the random
for a medication against the plague that comes
from doing this alone for so long.  

please,
write again and often until something makes sense. 

and, it sounds as if
you are with someone?  
tell them I said
don’t be a stranger,
stranger.  
tell them
to write me sometime, 
too.

A factory robot
living under the nail
of my right index finger,

that’s what that itch is, 
that mechanical call
to work on a poem for the sake
of automation, for the sake
of output, for the sake of 
stage time.

One of those
Fifties movie robots alive and 
spring-armed in the center
of my chest,

that’s what 
this desire to be a poet is, 
a longing with clumsy brilliance,
stymied sometimes into silence
when it neither understands
human emotion nor gives it room.

The robots of my poetry are failing — 

what’s the only thing you have left
when the factory robot in your hand shuts down
the assembly line and insists on retooling,
when the movie robot in your chest admits
it’s a short guy in a clumsy costume?

I don’t know what you call that, or me.

I seem to know a thing or two,
can get meals and drive and function
without thinking of poetry.
Seems happy, uninterested
in robots or drive or prosody or
even ambition.  

I don’t know this well enough
to think much of it.
When no one is looking or listening,
I stare at it as if we were not the same body.

I have caught it rhyming, smiling, 
tapping a rhythm while listening to
neighbors speaking, laughing.
I can’t hear gears or hydraulics
in anything it says.  
Is anything in here still a poet?

Because I have been bad to some,
it seems that I am (to some) also dumb.
Some claim that bad follows dumb,
that dumb is bad not yet come
to full fruit —

and there are others who hold that bad
is an afterthought of sad, bad sadly does not have
its own self-esteem held high, bad longs for 
a firm pat on the head to jar itself loose from fast
hold on sad —

oh, how bullshit walks and struts rationales around the bad.
Let us talk bad turkey:  my bad is sharp.  My bad is shiny.
My bad ate a devil and doesn’t feel bad at all about that.
So I have been bad to some. I sit back still bad and say:
for the fun of it,

in my bottom nature, at those moments,
bad was the only way to be.  Not that good
and true won’t set me free; not that bad is hard
and tight and short term over long haul — all true,
but bad — you know, bad sometimes becomes me.

So much thought is required
to come up with ways
to make people stupid
they ought to give out extra brains
to those who do that hard, hard work:

extra brains for those who determine the threads
connecting conspiracies, those who chide
the skeptics, those who smirk at disbelievers,
those who bend the facts to fringe and mirrors
and pretend assassins and robot planes…

Once the dumbing is all done,
what to do with all those extra brains?
It’s not like anyone will need them…

Recognize the herd before us?
At least we’ve got something to feed them…