Reproachable Optimists
Nathaniel S. Rounds
Copyright Nathaniel S. Rounds 2011
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Published by Fowlpox Press at Smashwords
ISBN
978-0-9877346-0-0
©Copyright 2011, Nathaniel S. Rounds
Published by Fowlpox Press.
This is an Egg Tooth Imprint.
Contents
A rambling soliloquy about shotgun-toting ducks in the everglades, followed by a monogram featuring the use of jujubes for good rather Than evil. Also some lyrics to an 18th century folksong concerning hygiene, as generally perceived then, i.e., “to bathe seldom shall lessen thoughts of impropriety”, etc., etc. Afterwards, the author invites himself over to your house, and asks to sleep on your sofa. That’s a dozen pages or so there. Then you close the book and glance nervously through window, waiting for certain doom. But nothing happens, and so you open a bag of nachos and eat them with butter, because you’ve always liked them that way. And that’s just wrong. Well go ahead, then, if it makes you feel better. But it shouldn’t.
Dark-Sword Grass
Uncle Uz
He was
A stuffed crust confessional
Freeze-dried absurdist
And
Moon in the valley of Ajalon
His
Apple sack belly
Burst through unzipped slit
Of calfskin leather jacket
Colour-matched to ship’s sail of
Face
Torn
By sun and sea
Uncle Uz snored and
Sparked commands through noontime nap
He cried “Nicotiana!” and proclaimed
“STOP
The incessant guitars
For I shall TOUCH (!)
And beautify
Profound Taxi
And maim egregious them
“STOP
The creedless
The sharp-nozzled
The cankered
“Eviscerate with safety scissors
Cheap smokes for third-world tots
Pee on snuff and spoils of office
Burgle the breeches of marauder bands
“For I shall TOUCH (‽)
And beautify
Profound taximeter cabriolet
And anoint its driver with
The tenth of an ephah of burnt
Toast
Jacob in Esau’s Body
In this melange de noix
Søren Suigenocide
The chicken gutter
And bipolar bookbinder
Eats
People noodle soup.
He approaches people and says
“Let’s go Dutch on a Danish.
You dilly. I’ll dally.”
With clipboard in hand he approaches a
Single-detached house
Semi-detached house
Camp in the plains of Moab
Row House
Dugout canoe
An enumerator has filled in the information above regarding three dwellings in his/her Territory. For which dwelling(s) does he provide instructions on surviving a nuclear attack?
He sleeps in his car and drives to work at 9:00 a.m. only to find the following messages on his Desk:
A message from a hostile Bald Knobber threatening to sing opera for the public if someone Does not call him back immediately.
A message from a member of the public upset about having to fill out the Braille form of the Questionnaire.
A message that an enumerator has resigned due to despair.
Which of the following answers best represents the order in which the homeless chicken gutter Should address the issues?
A. Just let it all go.
B. Just let it all go.
C. Peace on your spiritual journey. Seriously, bud, just let it all
Go.
Peace Work
I’m the guy who puts the banana skins on the bananas.
It’s peace work. Whenever I put the banana skins on
The bananas, I feel peace.
Most of the time, I put on the yellow ones.
For stores that sell a lot of produce to old people,
I put the green ones on. That’s because green means
Go, and old people have a hard time going. They
Like to say their going has got up and gone. So we put
The going back into their banana skins. Of course,
Nobody eats the skins, but the green skins
Give you incentive. When you smell the green in the scent of the
Banana, it makes you want to go. And for people who don’t
Wish to buy yellow bananas or green bananas, we put on
The black skins. These sell well to people who are mourning.
There are quite a few mourning people. They get up first thing
And all they want to do is jump up and die. So we give them
A black banana with odd spots and they have something to cry
About. It’s our way of showing we care.
Do Not Place Saw on Stretcher
I’m sorry our youngest, cruellest child
Scratched your eye last November
And that ever since then
Your eye likes to declare its perennial anger
By scabbing and weeping.
I’m glad that after recent treatment
You could still spy that bald eagle
At the corner of Middle Dyke and Bains.
However,
Your eyesight is still wanting.
I was that bald eagle
At the corner of Middle Dyke and Bains.
A New Identity, Inc.
Sweetheart deal with a clinical social worker
And a ghetto palm
Results in capturing winged figure with
Hair governed by beeswax
Flowers forming rib vault over
Sly exchange of dollar bills,
New persona
This Could Happen to You
I told them not to run
Drugstore cowboys and weekend beatniks
Whine mendaciously about teenage suicide
Encouraged by SUPER ANAHIST COUGH SYRUP
And cheap canvas tennis shoes
From the rooftop sings
George Washington Carver
Voice shatters glass
This made possible by
Running without aid of glasses into
Stainless steel peanut crusher
I told him not to run
Evening sky rosy red with
Typhoid fever
Causing the victim to dream
Of an alligator slipping through the cat door
To enjoy the hospitality of the Joneses
It might be advantageous at this time
To run
Histopathologic Exposé of Brain Trauma
(Lightly Fried)
Me?
I
Worked from Thursday midnight
Through to Friday afternoon
Woke up in the spring time
With the flowers in bloom
Yourself?
Let me guess:
You’ve been bowling
With your painful piles for nine pins
Stomach doing
vegetable somersaults
Live on the Sewage Network
And for commercial break
The world’s last housewife
Will sing/wail through tears:
Hey chicks and Charlies
How’s your old man
Still drinking bourbon on Gottingen Street
With that skunk leather jacket
And a farmer’s tan
The world moves indoors
And floods your toilet
While reading magazines
From the coffee table
And remarks loudly on your
Poor use of color and
How
Poverty is a flophouse rental
And its landlord is Stalin
And the fight between
Tenant and landlord
Shall continue unabated
Blah blah blah
Until we silence the spirit of poverty
Yada yada yada
In utero
But not to worry
For
This is what happens
When
The world and his missus
Get drunk on self-analysis
And reality TV
Broken Record
Got a lovely set of 78’ records here
You can shoot them off the fence
From the front porch
Pick a record
Pick a gun
There’s
Gene Autry and Slim Whitman and
Some Sousa Marches
Got a couple of shotguns
Dad left behind
When he got itchy feet
And
Headed south
Headed south
Headed south
One way
Shekhinah (Esse Quam Videri)
Hello rat,
Hello doc
Don’t be freaked out by the drained, blue dog
Body not quite attached to body
Trying to sleep on a hateful loveseat
Waiting for the dreams to slip under
Overdrive
Little external jabbing prompts
One eye to open and behold
God’s own light
Above the wings
Of cherubs
Perched above a floor TV console
Pathé record
Trills through a shofar horn
The bothersome, neat rat
Shall threaten the smooth beater
And allow the dog to dream
La Foi
When a woman moves a mountain
She drags it
Angles it
And hoists it with her knees
Then pushes it over an embankment
Until it falls into the water
The mountain top becomes an island
And the first step
Towards walking on water
Palilalia (Trim over Squeal)
In a simultaneous blindfold chess display
The world was now rejected by the people who reject it
Bastard’s muddle
Motive quarrels
Mama Earth has the Darmstadt blues
I think it takes three pills not to hear the mind cry
Child pipe your eye
Could have averted it all with one pill
Open ill
At the Balmoral Residence Club Hotel
I asked the wise man on the mountain top
What he thought about Taco trucks
His reply:
“Taco trucks
Might taste okay
But will never pass inspection”
Creeping Things and Fowls of the Air
At a block party for no one
We watch our city sink into an open wound
We watch ships do-se-do with cars and trees
And the earth whispers:
Rise
Perkin Rock
Kill and eat
Seed a cloud
And make it rain on me
Back shift manager
With the third horseman
On her forearm
Gives overtime
To her friends
And almost no time
To
“Oh!
Is that
You
?”
And the sky whispers:
Face of the
day
I’ve
heard your short cry
Piece of flesh and Earth dust
Too bad you and your three
Kids hunger
You’ll have Ramen noodles
And no
Meat
We watch our city sink into an open wound
We watch ships do-se-do with cars and trees
We are wicks of light snuffed by the same breath
Blight of self-interest has declared itself
And marked the day with night
Somnambulist
Drop the best thing you ever wrote
You are walking down a pathway only you can see
Drop the best thing
You see gravel where there’s oncoming cars
Drop the best thing you ever
In the city, bright lights replace beds of flowers
Wrote
