Three memories, a sensuously descriptive phrase
overheard.  Snippets you catch from the radio,
someone babbling, gestures, junk, movement, detritus,
the Psychedelic Anarchy you try to find,

For the Poem Manufactory: get a big pot,
throw this stuff in, turn the grinder crank
until words come out, and get stuffed
into stanza skins, something’s gut.

Poetry is thus an edible sausage you can eat,
to be uplifted, and when fed, feel complete.

The unicorn in my garden
.           has eaten all the bean leaves
.                   dangling ribbons from his horn

as maidens flit around
.                   in may pole circles

astride the beast of dreams
.                bare soft thighs clasped about
His hot back.

.                   Desire
floats in the air of the dance
.              around the horn.
.                      Thoughts of penetration,
of remorse, and loss reel through the maidens.

Tangled ribbons

Nothing flies quite like an elephant;
heavily     after they’ve tenderly plucked the leaves
and cleared a forest or two
rolled around in the clearing they made
splashing,      trunks spurting water
like whales in a pool just for fun,
after they’ve plucked the tender leaves
of fantasy, the beautiful flowers
in their tummies will not wilt.
******     *****
Can any of us really fly
when our tummies are full?
when we’ve added     thing    weight
to our souls,   when dream flowers
get hidden within,     small hopes un-withered
used occasional to prop us up,
when we’ve drunk too much and
our fleeting aspirations are drowned in morning woe,
empty as the smillys displayed on our screens
these illusion walls we stare at
night after night — baseball — morality plays.

Tired —  we’ve forgotten to play,
becoming as hard for us as   elephants  flying,
as we let others do for us,
provide the fly feathers of illusion
we can hold in our trunks.
.                                        Kent Bowker rev.  10/30/2014