Surreal Prose and Cons

Umbrella to sewing machine on dissection table: I salute you, old ocean/Breton scorns Hippies/Semi-automatic writing bursts from deviant posers in suits and ties/Euro-egghead Marxist manifestos/Hughes was right/the New no longer shocks/who reads Lautréamont?/surreal like a permanent collection at the Whitney/Breton scorns anarchists/politically incorrect smoke fills café/Man Ray meets Apollinaire at debutante ball/nightclub for nihilism’s fools/Dada’s brooding child/Artaud screams Van Gogh! as they forcibly administer antipsychotic meds/subconscious dreams of inevitable commodification/expect predictable juxtapositions/Breton scorns punk-rock/revolutionary footnotes to an arts thesis/who even reads Maldoror?/dregs of surrealism sold as T-shirts/waiting-room posters/hip postcards/neurosis celebrated/cerebrated/fetishized/fades

The shock of nothing new is so surreal;
Rebellion filters down and fades away
In images that T-shirt merchants steal.
The shock of nothing new is so surreal!
Nor Freud nor Marx can anything reveal,
And Maldoror has nothing more to say.
The shock of nothing new is so surreal—
Rebellion filters down and fades away . . .

 

 
  PROMPT #3:  write a surreal prose poem

 

Into Your Light

Poetry, when we first met
(I was too young to read back then…)
Your gifts were gold, and mine the debt.
My childhood was enriched again
And I grew older, full of hope;
I was not yet a misanthrope.

You intimated truths divine
And so I followed in your ways.
Hypnotic flame, I made you mine
To guide me in my dull, dark, maze;
Deep in a cavern, unaware—
Until you led me out of there.

Your lyric beams, whose light is sure
Discerned my unpoetic state.
Shining from realms where thought is pure,
You gave me sight, unlocked the gate.
Some despise your ancient beauty—
Others heed your call of duty.

Loosed from the cave, in sunlit weather,
Freeing souls from those sad regions,
Muse of mine!  We fight together;
Mocking dullness, slaying legions.
You (and Plato) are owed the thanks.
Guide us rightly. Lead the ranks.

 


PROMPT #2:

write a platonic love poem, not about a romantic partner, but some other kind of love –
The poem should be written directly to the object of your affections,
and should describe at least three memories of you engaging with that person/thing.

 

Hello Poetry Top Ten

As a poetry site I really like Hello Poetry. It is user-friendly and uncluttered. It is easy to comment and message other poets. It’s a sort of lyrical Facebook without the bells and whistles. A nice feature they provide is a count of how many views a poem gets over time. In this day and age, one never knows if these stats are truthful, algorithmic hype or fake, but accepting the bean counters at face value, here are my ten most-read poems since I began posting at the site in 2015. They range, top to bottom (if one believes the stats), from 44K+ views down to 9K+ views. Strangely enough, John Greenleaf Whittier’s Snow-bound which I posted there in its entirety, comes in at number one with 57K+ views. I wonder: are people actually reading these ?

1. Snow – Bound

2. Diversity Training

3. Planet of the Smartphones

4. Jungle Smile

5. Betting on the Races: Dark Horse

6. A Chicken in Every Pol Pot ☭

7. Poultry in Motion

8. Cuneiform: Textual Intercourse

9. Hung on a Psychosociolinguistic Scaffold

10. Christian Types in Limerick

Beneath the Willows

Lost that dull plot so many years ago,
Some guy named Heathcliff, a prim, proper room;
Something dark on the moors portending doom—
(No, wait—that was “Baskervilles”, different show).

A wuthering woman, her savage beau—
A conflict with tradition, hearts in thrall;
Romantic English swoons. Forgot them all
While seeking the plot beneath a willow.

Catherine? Constance? The heroine’s name
Escapes me evermore, and I don’t care.
A Brontë sister here receives the blame

For boring me with chick-lit and hot air.
That’s all I can recall. The novel’s fame 
Would indicate there must be something there . . .

 

PROMPT #1: write a poem that recounts the plot,
or some portion of the plot,
of a novel that you haven’t read in a long time.