POETRY
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ANOTHER USE FOR DUCT TAPE
I can think things that most could never imagine. Some say it is a gift; I’m not so sure. Gifts are usually finite, in a box, made of something tangible, wrapped in good intentions, well wishes from well wishers. But this is not so with imaginations, particularly mine — nothing nefarious, flies don't have to worry about dismemberment or hard flying objects. I won't be sharpening the twelve points of a buck’s antlers in the forest to even the odds between deer and hunter, though that actually does sound like an excellent idea. No, this intractable brain is not a gift so much as a source of food for the foot of duct tape wound sticky side out around my mind, filtering, editing, censoring all sorts of things that are better left to burn out with the meteors in the ethereal stratosphere where artsy deep thinkers get their pseudo-luciferous superpowers. Best, is when my deep space ejected imaginings get stuck in the tape and eventually fall into that vault called short term memory that has a clear path to forgotten worlds where shiny new thoughts quickly grow old brown rust. No, imagination is not a gift to me. Though I suppose one could say the duct tape is. © J. Alan Vokey, 2017 |
CRABS
Beady, black little convict eyes, clumsy giant hands and skinny, boney, rickety legs, feckless armour, feeble facade — we easily rip off your clothes and eat your naked sweetness and sleep with a smiling belly full of murdered arthropods. ~ © J. Alan Vokey, 2017 |
BOLD GNOME TALK Clay aliens huddled, inseparable leprechaun soldiers knee deep in grass guarding the lawns and bushes and flowers in weather worn ragged clothes and hideous faces of hilarious horror and cartoon hats whispering softly about their hate for bees and their incessant buzzing and their kamikaze stingers and also about the flies and their stench and lust for dung and birds and their toenails on the forehead and penchant for singing obnoxious bird songs and butterflies and their wings that tickle making them giggle so hard they want to pee their clay pants and don’t get them started on army ants or the dogs and their leg lifting yellow tinkles or raccoon gangsters taunting them at night for they are the sun bleached victims of the suburban plains suffering persistent human ridicule and childish babble and snooty top of the food chain alpha dog superiority verbiage pushing them deep into the shadowy irrelevance of night to seek retribution as people snore beneath the moonlight and they whisper soft protests about winter coming and fantasize about being bandits loose inside the homes they guard just to scream like banshees and snarl chipped gnome teeth at children waking them from sleep to see them scurrying outside onto the night front lawns shouting incoherently that the gnomes are alive while life exhausted parents yank them back inside giving yawned assurances that the monster gnomes could not possibly really be alive. And then, as always, once dawn arrives such hero gnome talk subsides and turns to whiskey and women and potatoes and tobacco pipes and wishing the master would turn them today to face the other side and of course, the favourite gnome conversation of every day: Garden gnomes running away. ~ © J. Alan Vokey, 2017 |