Friday, January 1, 2010

Maurice Oliver


Turndrumblind

Beneath the moon, to an address unknown.
Then other times, I kneel in the big church
browses templates. Life shines reckless and
born again. Like a mountain range. Like tea
leaves that are unreadable. And women are
painted in the ceiling and the confessional
box has no shoelaces. Unfastened buckles. A
little linoleum alter boy and a thrill from your
touch. What a superb nave it is! Walking down
the aisle with a halo above my Mardi Gras…

hungry for prays and immortal drops
of holy water with a hole in the bucket.

So if you’re asking my advice, I think you ought
to call it a picnic basket if it attracts ants.

Mirrors, heavy metal, and Mickey Mouse ears.
Or try a sunset that’s grainy but automatic.

Either way, the view will imitate you and a forest
wearing chiffon will appear when the fog lifts.

So bring your own land of milk and honey or
anything else you’re willing to exchange, as
long as the items make absolutely no sense.
 

And Now, More Uberthought Thoughts

Here’s some examples of the assumptions available:

-Lattice are responsible for most meadow seepages.

-A spy’s heart is 99% a prairie home companion.

-All rumors notoriously wear too much mascara.

-Hip-hop is peppered with a ballistic lab’s effluvia.

-Glass blowers have a soft-spot in their ovenalls.

-Wake-up calls have never condemned knuckle cracking.

-Blue is the bubble of farm laborers.

-Zebra rugs snore when they sleep.

-A cloudless dawn can be startled easily.

-Muslins pray three times a day.
 

Fun Da Mental

In this scenario even the folding chairs fall
on their knees in the hailstorm. Or Hail Mary.
Or Bloody Mary gone all floral in a vase. The
idea is to keep the arm forces plush and wall
to wall lap dancing then add a pitch of salt
and stuff musket steamers in the drain pipe.
In this scene we sit at the bar on toad stools.
She tells me her life story in the time it takes
me to tie my shoe. She claims her electrified
ivy secretly drips stardust without ever even
explaining the whens or whys. She insists the
corner of her love joy often rides downhill with
no hands and that her bird-like odor does has
an uncanny resemblance. By act three I’ve
confessed to having a tiny cashmere room
deep in the heart of my sock drawer and that
my shiny corridor is lined with childhood prayers.
We also realize we both like to watch water
when it swells and snow when it boldly falls
forty stories high and subtracting. Or flowers
in our tug-of-war. Gin Ginny. Rum Rumsfeld.
Fat notions of a moon pulsing outside. And
all the while, the live audience has the chance
to decide whether monogamy sleeps alone
behind door number two. Or when the dust
settles, the Gallop Poll questionnaires are
collected and used to measure pools of light
in the uppermost fascicules.
 

Here, Indisputably Here

Enormous rivers.

A route by way of a snoring back road.

Leaves, falling like pecan brittle confetti.

Road signs, producing an infinite number of themselves.

Sensual lip gloss, extenuating the black asphalt.

Shifts in wind direction caused by oncoming cars.

The sun, clouded and unable to jangle its shiny keys.

Deer, conscious of every stage of our passing.

Ringlets of steam rising from anything wet.

Noting the occasional ambivalent reed and crystalline wolf.

Heading north, as we leave a trail of breadcrumbs behind.
 

Exaggerations, Flexible Enough To Stretch

OK. OK. So the flying elephant wasn’t exactly blue.

Hold on. Hold on a minute. But it was the sum
of a dusty attic trunk of hay called equal
by way of water towers on rooftops.
It had a memory that occupied
a complete intentional
community looking
out on astonishing
landscape. Its language
was both luxurious and mysterious
under the big top approaching sublime.
And, more often than not, the clicking and
buzzing sound it made could cause the hair stand
up on the back of even your neck.
What else? O yeah, it could
swim, swallow and
peacefully graze
all electronic
devices
that teeter on conventionality.

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