SURREALISM: Pure psychic automatism by which it is intended to express, either verbally or in writing, the true function of thought. Thought dictated in the absence of all control exerted by reason…
but pieces of me
stick to whomever
I deep delve
you may have seen me
silhouetted against your sky
in coldest January
howling
with the frozen moon
a duet
to make coyotes
cower in their dens
then moon and I run
from room to imaginary room
your whole world
close enough to touch
we eat a midnight lunch
perfumed with foreign lands
and your thoughts
onion layered
your thoughts
are too heavy to hold
show mercy
peel back the layers
peel me away
thin by thin
skin by skin
to my quivering soul
my thoughts
bonewhite lies
of morality plays
open for you to see
hope they’re not hideous
in your sight
hope they do not
make you cry
as you peel back
all the layers
onioned thought layers
held firm
like a carapace
to which
I’m stitched
and welded
and can no more leave
than you can enter
they tie me down
sometimes
but sometimes
barely so
survivor that I am
the inescapable optimism
in my barebones grin
flashes
in the brittle moonlight
exposing forgotten creases
and clandestine gateways
to your mind
someone can learn
a thing or two tonight
if someone
will ignite the light
rob kistner © 2019
This is so good. I especially like the first couple of stanzas.
Thank you Lilly, pleased you liked this!
It’s alluring and alarming at the same time, and has that twitch of the surreal about it.
It’s the maze that is my brain, strange as it is Lisa, let loose to wander in random thought, lightly focused on the phrase — “ignite the light”. It is always fun to see where my mind goes when I give it free range. I can never do it perfectly, and fear doing so — I think that’s called insanity. 😉 Damned difficult, because it always searches for some “logical” conclusion.
I understand, Rob, I fear letting mine have too much slack in the chain, it might go for someone’s throat. To be honest, the idea of a totally tame mind scares me more than anything!
Too tame sounds cold and calculating Lisa — sounds dangerous yo me… and not very creative nor progressive. The world needs creative progressive people right now, who can and will think for themselves!
I love the imagery in the opening stanzas, Rob, and that silhouette:
‘howling
with the frozen moon’.
It made me shiver.
I also like the midnight lunch:
‘perfumed with foreign lands
and your thoughts
onion layered’
and
‘peel me away
thin by thin
skin by skin
to my quivering soul’.
The ‘barebones grin’ is a shocker!
Thank you Kim, pleased you enjoyed reading this. I publish and entire site, entitled “re*flect”, on which I publish only my stream-of-consciousness surreal poetry. It is not everyone’s cup of tea, but some love it. I haven’t put new work up there since my health began to fail in 2015. I really enjoyed this prompt because I allowed myself that unrestrained freedom to write abstractly, without restriction of hard logic. I am inspired to start writing more surreal work to publish on “re*flect”. I occasionally allow my surreal impulses to bleed over at times into pieces I write for dVerse — but mildly so. BTW, the Cheshire Cat popped into my head while I was writing this piece, that is where the “barebones grin” came from. I felt his smile to be a probing presence.
Wow!
I love how these two lines
“and your thoughts
onion layered”
are then carried through the poem….referred to in the “peeling.”
Just the idea of sticking to everyone one we touch….I find that fascinating. And for some reason, I’m thinking about that little tiny frog who has sticky residue on its feet — it must leave a bit of that goo wherever it treads? Just goes to show, words or no words, we do affect people in our interactions with them!
Well done! Ah you’ve peeled off some layer of thoughts in my head this morning!
Thank you Lillian! 🙂 I am very pleased you enjoyed this. Every interaction of any consequence, no matter how minor, does have residual affects — even if only that that moment. What the person does immediately after the interaction will include some residual affect from the encounter — and that will, like the ripples of a small pebble, alter their reality, even if it is just a small bit.
Rob- what an excellent response! I love the flow of this. Thank you!
Thank you Linda! 🙂
I appreciate the imagery of peeling back layers, like an onion…cool write, Rob.
Thank you Lynn!
someone can learn
a thing or two tonight
if someone
will ignite the light
It goes without saying that one can only savor goodness if one is willing to sacrifice
Hank
How very true Hank, how very true.
Onioned is a great verb for this dream wandering.
Thank you Björn, glad that resonated for you.
onioned thought layers…I really like that.
Thank you Kerfe. SOC/surreal poetry elicits a bit of a b&w reaction — you either love it or hate it.
Surreal suits you, Rob. I think this is my favorite ever of your poems..Well done.
Thank you Judy. I love writing SOC — but no nonsensical Flarf. There is a core “connectedness” in my SOC because I begin with what I call a ”focus phrase”. The expression of the focus may become broad and free form, but the path of the poem’s flow can always be found again — at least that is my committed endeavor each time, and usually I succeed. SOC/surrealism is my 2nd favorite poetry to write, just behind atmospheric nature poetry. It is not easy for me to employ the style in my writing for dVerse. The requirements of the prompts frequently aren’t compatible, but I love participating in the dVerse community. It is smaller than other online poetry communities in which I have participated in the past, but the quality is good.
You snagged me at /bonewhite lies/…an excellent SOC poetic. I never checked out your other blog back in the day, did you go whole pork and embrace the flarf/nonsense ingredient? Dreams for be are always SOC and very surreal, with jump cut editing. I dreamed last night I was driving someone somewhere, and realized I was peddling the car like a bike. We came to a bridge, made up of naked men. We stopped, I folded the car up and put it in my back pack, and gently walked over the bridge of flesh. How’s that for surreal?
Thank you Glenn. No, I never liked the flarf, it was too contrived. I love true stream of consciousness, though it is damned hard to do. You either lose your fluidity snd begin to try to slip into logic in order to construct conclusions, or you start pushing and “flarf” it up to be nonsensically disoriented. On my SOC blog my poems are generally one word per line and gather the momentum of a rant — though I employ line breaks fir emphasis. I love writing them, and plan to return my focus to my SOC work — but NO FLARF!
I like the running from room to imaginary room.
Thank you Frank! Thats a reference to my reading minds — it’s like running through imaginary rooms looking for info or secrets the individual has locked up in their head.
What is FLARF???? Never heard of it before
In short simple terms, the Flarf vision are poems of nonsense, masquerading as SOC (stream-of-consciousness) / surrealism. I find it contrived and pretentious personally. Hollow, nothing truly conveyed and nothing to be gleaned… IMHO!
Nevermind, I just went out to google and found the origins of it.
Cool Lisa. I personally do not like or respect the movement… JMHO! Perhaps someday our paths may cross. A chat over hot chai tea latte would be wonderful. I dont drink anything harder…