Poetry | Max Todd.

No Prose (Hope This Was Helpful!)

Posted on January 28 by maxtodd

imagine: pale blue air balloon,

greying wave of corpse decay

organs swelling, cities sinking.

Earth, she weeps, sweeps mankind wombwards,

past etiquette to creature code—

just crust, chest-thumps, and angry boils

bursting hellfire-high, warming

hovering hands, soft and scarless,

hanging from the blue balloon,

raking through the greying wave.

they say mercy, they’re drowning!

mercy from the mountaintop,

they say I should strip and jump down,

say “I’ll drown with you,” probably.

that’s you at the end of times,

that’s you.

hope this was helpful!

Das Magdeburger Einhorn

Posted on December 20 by maxtodd

[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.]

Why The Sausage Was Made (IV-VI)

Posted on August 19 by maxtodd

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.

Anarchist Wizard Shampoo Mantra

Posted on July 19 by maxtodd

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 Soup^TM!

Before the Betaalph Boiled Alphabet Soup^TM. 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 Soup^TM, 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 Soup^TM. 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!

Evolution of the Eye

Posted on July 16 by maxtodd

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.

Why The Sausage Was Made (I – III)

Posted on July 16 by maxtodd

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.