[Author’s Note: since WordPress is bad at formatting and I’m bad at coding, I’ve used images of for this poem in order to preserve its visual elements. Apologies for the amateur watermarks, or maybe not, because they’re definitely camp.]
IV. At the Polyhedral Pizzeria.
At the Polyhedral Pizzeria, the restaurant in the thrift store in the plaster Roman ruins on a B-movie budget: peeling back places, unfairly priced. We climb to our raised table and keep climbing our raised chairs, guessing how offensively valued the shelved vases are because we’ve waited hours for our food. Why then are the newcomers, the group of gurgling girls, comet-tailed by a silver platter— an order they’ve barely breathed? We’re impatient partners, you and I, salivating over the next table’s salad branes— balsamic and basil, peppered tomato and mozzarella strata. At the Polyhedral Pizzeria, displaced in time and space: confusing ascension with amputation.
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Sample of a Manifesto Printed on the Back of a Shampoo Bottle for a Wizard Separatist Group Which Briefly Attempted to Expose the Immaterial World by Means of Locally Sourced Hygiene Products:
[ DR. DO-BETTER invites you to SING-SONG ALONG to his recipe for ABCendence!
After the Armageddon, Anticipate An Awakening! Leisure is temporary— but nothing ever ends for you! After the Alphabet, Ascend to Alphabet SoupTM!
Before the Betaalph Boiled Alphabet SoupTM. Its Benevolence Boasts that we shall never Be Bereft of it, But this Bargain Behooves our eventual return to it. Happy Birthday!
Chaos Cannot be Copyrighted, though the Children know its name. Communicate the good word, but never Commodify! Our Condolences to the Culture-Consumed Cthulhu, but he Cannot Comprehend what’s Coming.
Do Defend our Descending Dithyramb, for this Dialogue is Demonstrably Dear amongst the Din of Duplicitous and Dogmatic Discourse. We Don’t Dilly-Dally!
Eek! Eek! Emanates from Everyone, the Entangled. They have never tasted Alphabet SoupTM, not like this. No matter! Enlightenment Entails Evolution, but in the End, Evokes Effervescence!
Father is Fallible, and his Flaw is Feigning this Fallacy! He was born like the rest of us his children from the primordial Alphabet SoupTM. So Foster Forgiveness, as his human Form would!
Gentrification is as Gullible as it is Godless! To Gentrify is to Generate your own Gulag, to become the mind’s Gestapo! Don’t Give in— Galvanize!
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To be fair, some microbes are
supposed to be good for you
As the wasp, as the worm,
as the pink Pepto Bismol
that tastes like metal for kids.
I hover above the toilet bowl,
my Head a fishEye, both bowls
my microbiome knows from
the fish that ties the greens and
blues we share between us.
Fish eyes and our eyes are both
bowls of water, but only
one of us still lives to swim.
So I must see contrary
to how I must see, must be,
without those who live within me.
Now
I lurch for evolution
because I can have neighbors,
but not bedfellows, even
if there are cities, history
in me.
I. Why The Sausage Was Made
Kevlar stops bullets, spider silk more so, but molars, most of all, make castle walls. You sip oatmeal through a boba straw, jaw-broken, psychosomatically satisfied without proper sustenance. Bone-scraping, marrow-slaking, seeds never sewn between crushing wisdom at the back of your jaw, yet still that dull, drilling ache. Maybe bullets and chocolate-frosted sugar bombs are not in the demolition crew’s toolbox– maybe a bath in ancestral addiction is all it takes to show why the sausage was made.
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Max Todd. 