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“Perfect, And Absolutely Useless,” “To
Finally Get Princed,” and “April In Rococo”
By Maurice Oliver
____________________
Perfect, And Absolutely Useless
We ring likes the bells in a Hemingway novel.
Then later, we play a game blindfolded with a world
map. Her finger toys with Greece or turns into a dozen
different stories about monasteries. She says
she
wants to be invisible so she can watch everybody else
live their lives. I say I want to spike the ice tea
with cyanide or tickle her ear. Bright green is the
astroturf. Stifling heat is the greenhouse. "Can a
prize be greater than the achievement", she ask, as
her drink forms a ring around its coaster. A paw of
steel. A shoebox of dodo feathers. My finger settles
on Zanzibar or we try imagining a picnic on a grassy
knoll in the shadow of an ancient ruin. We want to go
there but I forgot my raincoat. "Yeah, and I wonder
if anyone could be quirky enough to refresh me like a
soft drink full of bubbles", I reply, convinced this
is what they call thinking out aloud. The brown haze
of dusk. The urge to pull almost any trigger. And it
could go on like this or become a rented tuxedo, or
all of New York in a glass frame. Either way, we'll
still have our false passports, Eskimos will "think
snow" and that handwriting expert won't have a clue
when it comes to reading a doctor's prescription.
To
Finally Get Princed
Crows decide by majority vote to move to the city.
Warm weather blushing its way through the south.
Footsteps that disturb northern snow. A conspiracy
theorist. A plausible cliffhanger. The hands a doorman
uses. No kids. No druggies. No such thing as a free
lunch. Or sitting ducks. The goose that laid the
golden egg. Bodies that sway to the music. Linoleum
floors. Ten examples of how to feel wickedly sinful in
Cleveland. Anyone wanna to watch? Waterfalls that like
to chuckle. In a foreign country driving a jeep. Then
the phone rings but it's only a heavy breather...
a series of dramatic monologues at dawn...
a desire to experience anything promising pleasure.
His 30-inch TV screen wanting to be victimized.
Her statue of Eros wearing rosary beads.
Before we start she says, "I guess I'm not into STD's
personally but I'll try anything once".
The ad reads "must be flexible & or the artsy type".
A sexy Superwoman custom in colossal cleavage.
O yeah, and Mediterranean good looks are a plus.
"April In Rococo"
Shh. This is the part where the joy-juice of a grape
hugs a hairy nun
before reaching for the natural curtain of Wisteria.
Townspeople are forced to renounce every imaginary
friend. The diamond dealer wakes up as a glass eye
or his twenty-three year old frat-boy son
gets high on cough medicine & then dances naked
at a party. Russell's room paces back & forth.
Debra is a spinal tap getting sleepy or sometimes
maybe can't taste a single drop
of vermouth in the gin or I suppose Vermont
could be surprising
affordable. Either way,
everyone becomes an elementary school teacher
& fears death by water. The film's canister that was
on the jukebox a minute ago
is now summer at the drive-ins where night is just a
good time trying on cardboard boxes
full of somebody else's sun glasses.
____________________
Maurice Oliver spent almost a decade working as
a freelance photographer in Europe. Then, in 1995, he made a lifelong dream
reality by traveling around the world for eight months, recording his
experiences in a journal instead of pictures. And so began his desire to be a
poet. His poetry has appeared in The
Potomac Journal, Circle Magazine, Bullfight Review, Tryst3 Journal,
The MAG, Eye-Shot, The
Surface, Wicked Alice, WordRiot, Taj
Mahal Review (India), Stride Magazine
(UK), Retort Magazine (Australia),
& online at subtletea.com, undergroundvoices.com, friggmagazine.com,
tmpoetry.com, zafusy.com, girlswithinsurance.com, & interpoetry.com (UK). He
lives in Portland, Oregon where he is a tutor.
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