Crazy

 

 

 

 

Crazy

 

 

 

The psychiatrist sat
in his belle époque chair,
his beard a quenched fire,
crossed leg a hot wire.

He stared at me fixedly,
flirtatiously, fictively.
I closed my face another notch;
crushed haven on the velvet couch.

The questions were wrong
denser than dusk, older than insects,
each one packed with boxes
full of white mice and foxes.

Can you remember? not Can't you forget?

So much smoke and hot ash;

and after all that, his cigar

was just a cigar.

 

 

 

March 2025 

posted for the Word List

running with the bureaucratic theme this week

at Shay's Word Garden

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Image: Woman Leaving The Psychoanalyst, ©Remedios Varo  Fair Use

The Nature Of Fire

 

 

The Nature of Fire

"The  great desire of a flame  is to continually burn.

 The nature of fire is that it always wants more."

~Corvidus the Elder

Under the wing of the Crow

hides a feathery system of madness;

students burn syllables of darkness

spat into the alembic of sanity,
turning gossip of  metaphysicians
wanly cadaverous by starlight,

whispering quicksilver clues.

The philosopher's stone still eludes them

though they work with the frenzy of madmen

to dry the cold humors of water, push
a natural progression of vileness
to purity using the flame.
The nature of fire is that it's immaculate;
the mourning of fire is that it always wants more.

They speak these glowing desires

in the tongue-twisting gibberish of blackbirds,

court the devilish salvation of  oddity,

vulgarly cawing of victory in the

soothing-sweet chant of the damned.

I cannot credential this lunacy

despite my degree in Catastrophe.

I toast it instead with the elegy

of a memory;

our glasses hold legions of flames' flickered casualties

like ladies lavish with luxury

pile amusements in portmanteau'd  piracy,

 

knowing fire will always want more.

 ~December 2013

 

lightly revised, July 2023

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

reposted for desperate poets

   Woe For My Spurs

Original process notes: Poe prefaced many of his short stories with quotes, and many of them were ones he made up, as I did here with my  excerpt from the works of the imaginary alchemist, Corvidus The Elder.   

 

"The philosophers' stone or stone of the philosophers (Latin: lapis philosophorum) is a legendary alchemical substance said to be capable of turning base metals such as lead into gold... It was also sometimes believed to be an elixir of life, useful for rejuvenation and possibly for achieving immortality." ~wikipedia   And what deserves an elegy more?

 

 

Image: Alchemy the Useless Science, Remedios Varo

 

 

Pumpkins, Hornets and Dinosaurs

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our Trance

 

There he was, drunk as Baudelaire

and twice as fishy when

he unbuttoned the pearled rain from

my shoulders. I'd eaten stars

for dinner, so I didn't care

if it was a trance. 

That night

we were happy as pumpkins.

 

 

 

 

 

Archeology In The Dark

After millions of years, archeologists

found the dinosaurs

playing poker and spinning poems

in the tar. "We never knew we were lost,"

said the dinosaurs, "but thanks

anyway."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Funeral At The Old House

The old house was full of hornets that morning.

Hornets cooked the breakfast( ham and eggs

and mealworms.) Hornets washed the dishes

and went out for funeral groceries.

Hornets paid the bills and mailed them

with the correct postage. They mean well

but they sting.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Lucky

 

I keep wondering how

I got shut in with Frankenstein

and the old blind man

who ceaselessly 

lights candles while Frankenstein

smokes all his cigars.

Just lucky, I guess.

 

 

February 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for Shay's Word List #12

Richard Brautigan 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bonus: My favorite poem by Brautigan:

 

 

 

 

" Lions are growing like yellow roses on the wind

and we turn gracefully in the medieval garden of their roaring blossoms.

Oh, I want to turn.

Oh, I am turning.

Oh, I have turned.

Thank you."

 

 

~from Rommel Drives Deeper Into Egypt, by Richard Brautigan 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images:Pumpkinhead Self-Portrait, 1972, © Jamie Wyeth  Fair Use

Illustration of dinosaurs from the Late Cretaceous.© Jorge Gonzalez Fair Use

Vielles Maisons, 1920 © Helene Guinepied    Fair Use

Still from Bride of Frankenstein, 1935, Universal Pictures  Public Domain

Roses and Beetle, 1890, © Vincent Van Gogh   Public Domain   

Friday 55 June 1 2018

Welcome dear 55ers to another month and another Flash Fiction Friday, which almost didn't happen as I have had recurring connectivity issues in my antiquated DSL. If I am mysteriously absent, it will be due to circumstances beyond my control.

This meme is dedicated to its originator Galen Hayes, remembered with respect and affection for his ability to see the dark laughter under the surface of this life.The blogosphere has changed dramatically since his heyday just a few short years ago, but this meme hasn't--it's still no rules except 55 words of prose or poetry, no more, no less.


So, enough introduction--link your 55 in the comments below between Friday and Saturday at midnight, and let's kick this weekend's ass.

My 55 :

Losing My Grip

Each week the days are

a mangled non-sequitur, a hand's

fingers frankenstein-pieceworked:

Monday a fat woman's thumb

barely able to oppose,

Tuesday's delicate index
blush-nail-manicured,
astonished by work,

Wednesday
my own
upthrust twig,

Thursday's scarab-claw digit

a pharoanic relict,

Friday a child's pudgy pinkie
short as summer.

How can this hand

grasp
 anything
at all?

~May 2018

And because I am tired of unadulterated gloom, some Frankenfurterian musical accompaniment:

Images: Illustration © Eko, in The New Republic 

Still,  from Frankenstein (silent movie) 1910    Fair Use

Lacunal Dialectic

Lacunal Dialectic

They gave the wide-eyed eccentric

the wild electric

because

there's a  price for every metric,

every loggorheic epic

showing we pull from world-bone

a hole

that goes systemic,  

and fill it,

anthropocentric.

So they made

his dialogue enteric,

scaled to monosyllabic

microbes:


hurt            love           scream          want

                           dead

changed everything he said

and killed his head.

~August 2016

posted for    real toads

Flash 55 Plus

Notes: I often used to add abstruse words to my 55's to tease the G-Man, who would pretend he didn't get it, but of course, we knew better. So this one in particular, despite its rather grim subject matter, made me remember him.

"Ernest Hemingway, American author, committed suicide shortly after ECT at the Mayo Clinic in 1961. He is reported to have said to his biographer, "Well, what is the sense of ruining my head and erasing my memory, which is my capital, and putting me out of business? It was a brilliant cure but we lost the patient...." ~wikipedia

Electro-convulsive therapy (electro-shock) is still considered a valid treatment for depression and other mental illness, despite mixed evidence of its effectiveness, and can still be administered without consent in some situations. You can find a list of other famous people who have undergone it HERE.





Top image: Brain, author unknown,  source
Footer: 'A Bergonic chair, a device "for giving general electric treatment for psychological effect, in psycho-neurotic cases", according to original photo description. World War I era.'~ via wikimedia 

The New Prometheus

The New Prometheus

(a sonnet of sorts)

Into my waking dream you sometimes come

to take the thing I no longer thought I had.

Your staccato rhythms on my flesh-tuned drum

give me the soaring solace of the mad.

So full of the gods' unbanked Promethean fire,

you make theft a gift and violation a desire

so warm with love there can only be surrender--

my cold inertia to what will melt and render.

This fantasy lightning-bought, hot-wired to life,

flash-frankensteined to fit my hid ambitions,

like an army drilled in invisible munitions

I name imagination's blurred-blade knife,

yet I have no surgeon's intimacy with death's bite;

I can't claim this illumination as my own light.

~November 2015

Process Note: The subtitle of Mary Shelley's iconic Frankenstein was The Modern Prometheus, a reference to the cost, perhaps, of bringing things to life. Also, I call this a sonnet, but I'm afraid I have not paid much attention to the proper meter or rhyme scheme.

Images:

Top:The Beethoven Frieze: The Longing For Happiness Finds Repose In Poetry, Right Wall, detail. 1902 by Gustav Klimt. Public Domain, manipulated.

Footer: Charles Stanton Ogle as Frankenstein's Monster, Frankenstein, 1910,

 Public domain, manipulated.

My Funny Frankentine

byFreya90 deviantArt

My Funny Frankentine

 'my funny Frankentine,
freaked cozmic Frankentine...you make me scream 
with my heart...'

It's time again

to go back, run back

into the burning barn

that burns forever

where the horse is dead meat

to fly in a panicking run

though there's nothing to save

to start in the empty night

at the trip-beat thump

from the telltale grave

shovel up the remains

stare at the gone skull face

and kiss it, again and again

to lay on the slab

counting the stitches

cigarette-burn itches

while the mad doctor laughs

and lies you're alive.

~October 2014

posted for    real toads

Challenge: Out of Standard

Isadore Gruye (The Nice Cage) evokes one of my favorite films, Shaun of the Dead, and asks us to imagine ourselves in a bunker during the zombie apocalypse--this is my picture of someone who might be in that bunker, or maybe, outside trying to get in...

Optional Musical Accompaniment

Image via facebook, copyright Freyja90 on deviantArt

No copyright infringement intended--will remove on request.