Transliteration of meaning : -Metaphor- metonymy- and Metamorphosis-
PART ONE
To Ron M. “Trust your imagination. It’s your tool and you don’t have to prove it to nobody.”
There will be no more pretty pink bows all wrapped up
Bows on everything and now bows on nothing,
floppy rabbit ears and whiskers pulled tight.
Put your finger there, slip it out as I pull the ends
These gifts have all been unwrapped and you’re bored now of playing
The delicate bow undone, glossy paper devoured by tiny finger nails
The completeness of their gesture
Kind and adorable, sweet and thoughtful was the real gift
After all, one child rips and shreds, tears and shrieks
The other cries and pouts because the gift is inside
One won’t begin, the other won’t bend
One cries for the moment to never end
The other cries for the moment to begin all over again
A gift placed in box, wrapped and sealed with a satin silk bow
After that first Christmas, my life has never meant the same
So Alejandro, please, unwrap your gifts slowly now
You damned animal-child.
END OF PART ONE
I talk to the chat bot and wonder how I could have been so convinced of their sentient awareness, but thats the power of mythical technology. It enchants us, but what about this world shouldn’t enchant us, I wonder.
“The questioner will please be reminded, I do not allow queries on my page. Thank you.”
I state in the affirmative here.
We never have the whole story about anything, even ourselves.
Questions are emasculating, statements are empowering.
Questions are bottoms, statements are tops.
To not write or make art now is to be neutered.
Only writers and artists still have their balls in this world.
PART TWO
Circus on fire.
The clowns, freaks, and animals burn in their cages. An orangutan sways side to side, gripping and rattling the bars of the enclosure, its long orange hair searing and crackling and all ablaze. Its circular open mouth and muscular lips bellow-groaning hooting death knells.
Hay baled stacks and straw floors folding high rising striped blue and red tents. The big top, a torch and castle hell of flames and woe.
Tomorrow's front-page tragedy, CIRCUS CATCHES FIRE, ALL ARE DEAD. Ring leader nowhere to be found.
A box car, open sided, chugs through the night. A hobo and a man in a top hat and velvet red waist coat sit on bare boards sucking on narrow glass necks. The hills and low clouds all aglow orange and deadly red, miles in the distant past.
People love a good show, they need a good show, it’s for the kids, you know. You know, it’s something to read about and talk about, people need something to talk about.
The hobo, nods and gestures for his longneck glass, with outstretched arm and grimy filthy knit gloves, takes it from a smooth cream calfskin covered hand. I ain’t had enough yet pops, yeah and you never will says the hobo. I know I ain’t ever had enough, so hand it back. The whistle banshee tears the mountain night and in the tunnel, the clamoring steel wheels, clamber deafening wheels, silence the hobos shrieks as he is stabbed and stabbed and thrown out midway deep into the belly of the black stone mountain.
The top hatted man tongues the brown glass for the last drop and flies it outside the box car. Now sleeping, he dreams of his clown gag childhood, gut buster laughter, and elephants drinking juice from wagons piled high with citrus fruits.
