Eight: Abnormalizing (poetry series)

 

 

 

Abnormalizing

 

Should Dr. Comus mount to the podium

Begged before he dies, of a valediction, lightning-bolted by the gaze

When freed as angels his victims anneal him

And words break out, in patterns of revealing

His ilk, his false-named friends, a younger colleague

A theoretician, but a go-getter, they turn them out

that way, it’s admirable, the zestiness, of the United States

different kinds of cutters

shape the dough into different cookies

sleighs and stockings

bump-edged rounds

featureless limb-splayed men

Dragée smiles onto them, the wiser sort of guys

Who won’t be taken in, now prove that you are not a skull

wearing the healthy skin

of a human being prove you aren’t a radio receiver

Tuning voices from Pacific atolls atomized

Cries for answering cries, in still, early hours

Stating facts the stating of makes injured of

Secreted persons laying vials on slabs of white Formica

Let us choose for you your prize, absolution of the sin of pride

By a Calvinistic bent, it is your destiny to help

hidden even to yourself

Symptoms you display, thinking thoughts unbridled

And if the subject thought the thoughts we think

There would be no God

Everything is somewhat true, around the backside

of the globe, under knittings of squat palms

clumps of grass that bouclé steppe lands

Data of sequestered realms, sequestered truths all lock

their knucklebones together, fencing off

Grim Gordian knotters

Everything

Somewhat

True

Is it necessary to break the house

Life, you say and say, is mission

The old men linger, radiating their weak charisma

 

 

 

---

Abnormalizing

Patter

Picking Brains [sowing paranoia]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(2019, Stephanie Foster)