SurVision Magazine
An
international online magazine that
publishes Surrealist poetry in English.
Issue
Nine
MARK DeCARTERET
The Last Ever Parable
The moons were so
numerous
even you, fattened on golden calf
and doubled up on your dosages,
had long soured on those odes
you'd dashed off while seaside,
the salt lasting a lifetime, the wrens
roused from your guidebook as if
having invented a new sadness.
You were still making the same face
when they came with their cameras.
Flash-lit, you seemed to swallow
it for safekeeping, further thought.
Even if you wrote as the Christ,
or some fellow, rife with evil spirits,
the Christ pig-flung from a cliff or else
the Christ's sire, wouldn't it still be
a form of first person, at least superhero,
your laughter not so much the irony
as the distance it traveled to hit you?
even you, fattened on golden calf
and doubled up on your dosages,
had long soured on those odes
you'd dashed off while seaside,
the salt lasting a lifetime, the wrens
roused from your guidebook as if
having invented a new sadness.
You were still making the same face
when they came with their cameras.
Flash-lit, you seemed to swallow
it for safekeeping, further thought.
Even if you wrote as the Christ,
or some fellow, rife with evil spirits,
the Christ pig-flung from a cliff or else
the Christ's sire, wouldn't it still be
a form of first person, at least superhero,
your laughter not so much the irony
as the distance it traveled to hit you?
The
Last Ever Monologue
What
the hell's the deal saying
these words in this manner –
half-orderly, half-droll
and overall, icy, decided-on
well ahead of everything –
or was it merely a voice thrown
from out the unnamed depths,
the step missed by even
one's most careworn of pets
in our mass recovery, ineptness?
I mean, who isn't similar in
their ill temperament, air,
and not worthy of healing,
being led out themselves again,
divided up amidst all these
miracles, lover-confidantes,
in the time needed to wolf
down a flow chart or ark story,
received into these vice grips
for the good of all sufferers?
these words in this manner –
half-orderly, half-droll
and overall, icy, decided-on
well ahead of everything –
or was it merely a voice thrown
from out the unnamed depths,
the step missed by even
one's most careworn of pets
in our mass recovery, ineptness?
I mean, who isn't similar in
their ill temperament, air,
and not worthy of healing,
being led out themselves again,
divided up amidst all these
miracles, lover-confidantes,
in the time needed to wolf
down a flow chart or ark story,
received into these vice grips
for the good of all sufferers?
The
Last Ever Amateur Hour
North
of here, the sun can do
little but insist on night, sink.
Then we get the second guessing,
the segueing into nonsense.
Maybe this is why I'm dousing
my insides with gin again,
sounding off about a lifetime of thirst
but thinking how the leaf underfoot
seems to feel for our mess
though a thousand others
are full of righteousness, snot?
Like most tykes in the fifties
I was handed a magic kit
and like most am still masterfully
underestimating the damage it caused.
Worse, I cleared the sill
of those lesser forms, left
myself with this acre of sorrow,
oddly tan-lined from all my antics.
South of here, the sun can do
little but sing to us of other suns
in a style they regrettably recalled as
"organ-ground" and more so "day-lite."
If you came back to us at all
it was as that macabre work of art –
shells, glue-stuck to your ugly mug,
your flesh stitched each Easter
with Christ's healing thread, three
of the loneliest doves pecking
gravel on your chest. Was it you, who'd
manned most of my nightmares,
righted those names I swore-off?
Statistically, the dead always score
higher on steadfastness, will.
little but insist on night, sink.
Then we get the second guessing,
the segueing into nonsense.
Maybe this is why I'm dousing
my insides with gin again,
sounding off about a lifetime of thirst
but thinking how the leaf underfoot
seems to feel for our mess
though a thousand others
are full of righteousness, snot?
Like most tykes in the fifties
I was handed a magic kit
and like most am still masterfully
underestimating the damage it caused.
Worse, I cleared the sill
of those lesser forms, left
myself with this acre of sorrow,
oddly tan-lined from all my antics.
South of here, the sun can do
little but sing to us of other suns
in a style they regrettably recalled as
"organ-ground" and more so "day-lite."
If you came back to us at all
it was as that macabre work of art –
shells, glue-stuck to your ugly mug,
your flesh stitched each Easter
with Christ's healing thread, three
of the loneliest doves pecking
gravel on your chest. Was it you, who'd
manned most of my nightmares,
righted those names I swore-off?
Statistically, the dead always score
higher on steadfastness, will.
Mark DeCarteret is from New Hampshire, USA. His poems have appeared in Agni, Boston Review, and Chicago Review. His collections titled (If This Is the) New World was published by March Street Press in 2007, and his following two collections, For Lack of a Calling (2018) and lesser case (due towards the end of 2021), are published by Nixes Mate Books. He was Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Poet Laureate.
