Scott W. Alten, 3 november 2011
(an echo of James Dickey’s “The Sheep Child”)
Appliance salesmen frantic to fornicate
with everything with soft down pillows
with porcelain vases high
heel shoes will avoid the
appliances through tales of their own
make, model and design
Saying I heard about
this dude working in a Jamesway
found hidden in the back
this thing that’s only half
toaster like a shiny infant
stuck on the discount rack because
those things don’t sell it has
a browning button but you know it’s broken
this guy’s brother told me . . .
But this all gets, pretty much,
forgotten. The salesman have taken
their rightful place in management.
The toasters are safe in their department,
appliances but we senior salesmen
still are curious about that
Jamesway discount appliance shelf.
Perhaps hidden within bad inventory?
Merely with it’s knobs, the toaster baby may
be saying saying
I am here in my father’s store
I who am half of your world, came electrically
to my mother on the top shelf
of the appliances where she sat like nobility,
waiting to be purchased. It was unbridled lust
from a flesh and blood world that took her
from behind, and she turned on, without plugging
in, without switching on, giving her best
self to that inane need. Upon finishing she remained
motionless on the shelf, and in a sound of guilt
and humiliation of something bleeding
profusely, she started, as she had to,
to manufacture me. I awoke malfunctioning,
In the track lighting of the store, with my eyes
more silver than human. I saw for a neon moment
the great department store from both sides.
Salesmen and product in the round of their need,
And the air conditioning chilled my hull,
My hand clasped my handle/
I consumed my one meal
of electric milk and broke down
staring. From the appliance section I was switched
to the discount shelf, where the dust
is removed weekly by a Spanish woman
and nobody buys anything. Piled back in a corner
next to a cracked television
I see the cash register eye
to eye, but I fail to pass it by.
Broken, I am most assuredly functional
In the minds of salesmen: I am it that drives
them like welfare mothers from the full priced items
and the virginal mineral water.
They go into lawn-care into toys and hobbies they go
deep into their known sales pitch. With me in mind,
they lie they wait the make commissions.
They marry check out girls they raise their own kind.
Scott W. Alten, 3 november 2011
(an echo of James Dickey’s “The Heaven of Animals”)
Here they are. The cynical eyes open.
If they have lived in a city
It is a city.
If they have lived in the suburbs
It is lawns manicured
Beneath their shoes, endlessly.
Believing not in souls, they have come,
Regardless, beneath their knowing.
Their scrutiny wholly blossoms.
And they awaken.
The cynical eyes open.
To teach them, the terrain manifests,
Outshining, amazingly
Outshining what is expected:
The richest reincarnation,
The deepest abyss.
For some of them
It could not be the place
It is, without thought.
They contemplate, as they have done,
But with argument and debate made perfect,
More scientific than could be remembered
They pontificate more methodically
And sit at the feet of sages,
And their logic
Upon the weak minds of those detractors
May seem endless,
In their logical, methodical analysis,
And they who are believers
Know this is their afterlife,
Their Nirvana: to listen
With such divine patience
To those who speak down to them,
And to have no doubt,
Only pity, understanding.
Relenting themselves without confusion.
At the cyclic center,
They listen, they hear
The godless babble.
They hear, they are brow beaten,
They believe, they are born again.
Scott W. Alten, 3 november 2011
Imagine there was
an escaped mental patient.
He could pose as a poet
because producing poetry
would be easy for him
as poetry and paranoia-schizophrenia
are almost interchangeable.
He might teach poetry
at a university out west,
to sane students,
and then he might take
a two hundred dollar a week
speaking engagement tour
that lasted through summer.
And when he was finally recaptured
and returned to the asylum,
nobody would be surprised.
Scott W. Alten, 2 november 2011
I will begin with a pink ribbon
and all its ambiguous implications.
Then I’ll ease in a large
dog, a Siberian Husky or Saint
Bernard and let it run. Perfect!
After the canine, show
off my prowess with language,
add an alliteration (All
the best poets use ‘em.).
Later, deeper into the poem,
I’ll revert to concrete
imagery, a tree
or phonebooth should do.
All the while taking
care to avoid
disparaging melodrama
and heart wrenching sentiment.
To wrap it up I’ll end
with an obscure literary reference:
claim Marlow loosened
my tongue, getting me
to the heart of it. Brilliant!
Scott W. Alten, 2 november 2011
Last Thursday I had lunch with Jesus,
he complained about the help.
Apparently they were stealing
jewelry, the good silverware
and pieces from his favorite
Sears Craftsman metric ratchet set.
He said he felt helpless:
a teacher with bad pupils,
a spleen riddled with cancer cells.
But they had lifetime contracts,
binding ones. And a sly shop steward.
I told him to put the jewelry
and good silverware
in a safety deposit box
in Mecca.
His people would never think
to look there.
And I reminded him
of the Sears lifetime warranty.
Scott W. Alten, 2 november 2011
When I put the refrigerator
in the cornfield
I only meant to cool noon down.
High sun is too hot for the snakes
and I couldn’t see ‘em at night.
Dr. Something-berg (a Jew, I think)
asks me about my penis.
I tell him it’s massive, big
as a house. And how’s your
pussy, sir?
In the day room
Billy the Dummy records all
the conversations he has with me.
There is (I am sure) a small recorder
hidden in his left wrist
and disguised
as a well healed suicide
scar. He doesn’t think
I know and so never suspects
I am always lying.
Annie is very fat
and always chewing
on something moist and loud.
I hate her, always
talking with her mouth
full. And she distrusts me, too.
I never let her see me eat.
Mostly I just stare
out the large windows. I try
to watch what’s really going
on. Stop my shaking. Control
my erections. Be normal.
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