Some old Greek guys were eating instant chilli from a vending machine
While doing their laundry at the Laundromat.
They were discussing a paperback on psychoanalysis.
Cleobulus: From the perishable standpoint, psychoanalysis supposes
That the mental representations of the conferrers
Have a cathexis of definite quantities of low-cal
Heideggerianism. No, wait. That’s another book I’ve been reading.
Who has quarters? I only have this five.
Solon: The machine by the bathroom makes change. Back to the
Discussion. The purpose of the ballyhoo man is
To hinder any constipation of these woodwinds
And to humiliate any tongue-tied monologists to which he
is subject. Stin iyia sas!
Chilon: This dryer is dead. I feel sorry for the proprietor.
Repairs must cut into his profits pretty bad. The path of mental flora
Is tight-fistedly synchronized by the “pleasure-pain principle”.
Genetheto phos.
Cleobulus: I get all these books from my wife because she wants to have
Something nice to talk about at home. She says, “No old man in his underwear
Watching the game in the man pit.” The books get all scrambled in my head.
Bias to Thales: I forgot my socks. I keep them in a net bag. No socks for bowling.
I have that book you guys are going on about. I got it at fifty percent off.
I recall it talking about the original pleasure-pain principle getting pureed
In a food blender with reference to the external world,
Giving place to the “bow tie”;
whereby the tongue-tied monologist with suspicious leanings toward
A neglected form of Heideggerianism learns to project the pleasure of
Self-inflicted pain. Like a sicko pyramid scheme.
Thales to Bias: I hope you get to spend some quality time with yourself. Really get to
Know the man in the man. Know what I’m saying?
Pitticus: Am I the only guy that is starving? This chilli is flavoured water. The company that
Sells this stuff is gonna pay someday. It will undermine the young people. It has already.
Thales: Like really get inside your brain and kick the tires. No, that’s cars. More like,
Check out the house and see what stinks in the attic. Then tear it all out and make a nice guest
Bedroom. I did that a few years ago. In the literal sense, I mean.
Periander: It would be wise to go to that cheap Chinese place for lunch. We can put the laundry in the trunk of my car and I’ll pay. I have these senior coupons for Fridays.
Need a Million Men
There’s a hundred dead between us
That old school and me
Crazy kids from town
Knocked the headstones down
Our clouds come from the refinery
Sky is like Christ’s glory
Seldom seen by often felt by the faithful
Sun is a red poker train crossing light
And my window is bullet proof glass
Dress Rehearsal for a Funeral
Every day I dress the corpse
Italian suit of silk
Tie and kerchief
Cuff links and fine leather shoes
Drink one scotch
(Just one now)
Watch waves conclude inconclusively
Wait for the sun to clock out
Ride with the moon in a side car
To the club changing room
Keep my pressed pants over the chair back
Laugh with the radio
Hit the stage after Death’s knock on the door
Sing the requisite American Song Book
Through a Viennese filter
Sing some undeserved and early hits
Which were written for a younger voice
Graciously fold to applause
Sing the prearranged encore
Slip into something more comfortable
Turn the night into a blue pill slumber
Awaken and bathe and repaint and dress
That corpse in the mirror
Who never closes his eyes
Eh! Voidable Me1
Wow
Thierry Shevchenko
I mean there are few names like it
Inscribed upon American Tourister Tiara luggage sets from 1968
And the man is still around somewhere
Minus his luggage
Maybe he still has some lady weave his back hair
Into an exotic cape
It’s legendary now
He could solve mysteries with such epic disdain
He hated helping people
Anything that involved removing his scantily clad, hirsute body from his haunt
At a particular bistro table on Rue St. Denis
There in Montreal
The place that had its liquor license revoked six days out of seven
So he would drink cognac from a hole in a hairdresser’s mannequin head
It was wrong, wrong, wrong
But he and Élodie liked it just fine
He said he learned to remove himself from the troubles of man
All thanks to Élodie the hairdresser’s mannequin head
He had learned his disdain for all people and things
From Élodie the hairdresser’s mannequin head
Who reminded him of the time they had gone to a second hand store
To buy a food blender
And the food blender refused to make any food
It was a third hand blender
Originally purchased at Eaton’s in 1988
Then sold at a Value Village in 1996
Then finally purchased by Thierry and Élodie
At Le Coffre Aux Trésors Du Chaînon
In 1999
The blender spoke in a disdainful teen girl voice
That English-speaking undergrads use
The one that spits out a sentence
That ends with the final word sound like a squirrel
Groaning before dyinnnnnnnggggggg
But not really dying
More of a casual death
As in “I had this mocha cappuccino
And now I’m dyinnnnnnggggggggg.”
Then they bought a new blender
Made in Vietnam
And it operated as a great remote control for the TV
And would shout “TV kích hoạt!”
Which their neighbour from Vietnam
The one who talked into a cell phone while
Pacing the hallway in his pyjamas
Stated was a misprint
But that clearly the blender must have been assembled
In tandem with another order for remote controls
And that he could not right now as he was expecting a call
From his brother in Hanoi
But then
Sooner than one can say “Sh-it’s a voiceless palato-alveolar fricative!”
I climb the stairs up to your detached soul
You the shrink with the pin-striped suit
r /> The girl gone keeper of mind
Inside I find
Pictures of you
Walking your mum’s Deutsche Dogge
I eat the experimental medication
And alternate with a placebo and a flying squid
I eat imaginary furniture and watch children clap ritualistically
I try to walk forward backward and sideward
I sweep a dirt floor with a grass skirt
You march at night around the 5th floor
You march at night and recite photographs of every moment
You have recorded since age six
When you started to remember to remember
You ate a cake in Montreal
A strange old man held your hand
You left your hand at the wrist in a waste paper basket
You dried your tears on a burning bus
You pushed birds into the holes of sinking ship
You told the giant men what to speak and to whom
You told trees and sun where to cast shadows
You told obliging coyotes with hats held to their chest
To wander back home
Backward and down into recessed field not growing
Still cold
And red
Like angry skin
Like fire burning under arctic ice
You have become the real legend
The crazy shrink letting her hair down
Crazy shrink led to the door
Crazy shrink pushing chair and notebook out the open window
And hiding under the fainting couch
I return to your office in the old factory
Holding a flashlight beneath a basket
Because you’ve come to hate bright light
And I whisper remembrances of Thierry Shevchenko
And his always wanting to solve the mystery of the 27 Club
And theorized that all these cats that died at age 27
Are actually alive at an undisclosed location
A gated community for seniors in Miami
They play volley ball while wearing sun shades
And how I have lost all communication with Thierry
But then present to you Élodie
In the hope that you shall become best friends
As you share so much in common
On Deathly Snog2
These being the confessions of a male anglerfish
(Parasite division)
And
Screwball
Lonelier plotter
Named Lowly Bob
Once a free spirit on Marlborough Street in gold lamé suit
Who has been described as the opinion commonly was
As being devoid of brain or brawn
But who as a child of light eschewed all evil
And became eyes to the blind and feet to the lame
I was quickly dying of lonesomeness
Wandering through supermarket trees
And then determined that it might be better to better oneself
By plugging into a female of formidable sway
On a permanent basis
Namely
One anglerfish named Robyn Snow, age twenty-two
Even though doing so
Would lead to my hasty corporeal decline
Leaving only the tiniest of gonads
For burial or derision
I was adamant in knowing my opportunity
And so I seized it like a crazed gambler going
Tête-à-tête with a one-armed bandit
My ears never recovered from bleeding
And my nerves never ceased to quake
My loins were cursed with flaccidity and decay
Still
I yearn to receive my supper and television programs
And encyclopaedias of many kinds
For free
One cannot get such tonic and enchantment
Without cost in these darksome days
And so I tapped into a lonely wallflower
All pretty and educated in things clerical
And found that like me
She desired erudition and its appurtenances
On an unvarying basis
And so I connected myself most permanently
With that formidable young lady
The results were immediately startling
My mind’s eye witnessed peculiar apparitions
Regarding times distant and future and placed them
In the here and now
With a ringing sound and no soothing divider
All newspaper headlines and manifestoes
Of the most misfortunate kind
As might be gleaned from this:
KIDS WILL DO ANYTHING
FOR THE BEGINNING OF SORROWS/
FALL INTO THE FALSE PROPHETS/
INIQUITY JUST FEELS RIGHT/
DIAL DOWN THE LOVE OF MANY
--All thanks to radio waves jarring
With muddy water
I found to my dismay
That I could not press Robyn’s clothes just right
Or be her constant button man
Without heated discussions and provocations
Gushing through holes in our public housing
To neighbors and landlord and superintendent
Our unrelenting discord
On the other fin
Matrimony is private by definition
Even when by insolvency or contrition
It begs for the listener to opine
Most have the common decency to decline
And instead
Resign themselves to glowering
Over cold beans and bread
But no one would deny
That we loved each other
Like Captain Spaulding and Mrs. Rittenhouse
While gasping for water in a dead land
And finding only the sourest of mead
We naturally refused it
And yet
As though by some cruel curse
Its taste poisoned our dry lips
And lingered there
But we would not fight it
Nor would we dodge the stinging arrows
Of so many winged putti
While with restrained fear
We sought the nearest pier
From which to jump
So that we could reacclimatize to our aquatic ways
These were anxious, harrowing days
And in the thick grass of it
We found our Satan-as-serpent
Toppling ash cans in the alley
And darting forth on four wheels
A battered Land Rover
Narrowly missing me
Pushing Robyn to the ground
She with child for six month’s time
I between regurgitations of favorite books to undergrads
I got her into a taxi
The child was not affected
My wife survived a broken leg and wrist
And through a twisting of circumstances
Our romance was rekindled
Until
I began to falter and wither
First my moral resolve
Then my will to live
My Id hid its golden reflection from me
Then snuffed itself into oblivion
The new child’s birth did little to brighten
What had become a room of mourning
And now with Junior gone to raise his own mainsail
And a wife drenched and moldy in a storm of grief
I feel a stranger has thieved what might have remained
Of my crowning glory
A book of words raw with unrefined energy and life
Bound stiffly but affably
Bidding the treasure seeker
Both entry and adieu
Pocket Cruiser (Weeping)
Base and Jar
Please don’t leave me
I need something to hold
r /> Tears falling off a roof top
I need a tarpaulin and a long sword
To make a sail for a short boat
I need more tears to make a sea
To set the boat in for a long journey
I need a choir of amicable peers
To sing and to cheer me into high spirits
Because heaven knows
That I won’t be coming back
About the author:
A reformed Texan, Nathaniel S. Rounds
Writes from the tallest eyesore east of Montreal.
This is his heaviest chapbook.
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