Saturated Landscape

by Tony Towle

There is a special trip, scenic and
personal, that everyone should take.
To launch it, press the link
Here.  I’m going to continue
with my prepositional ruminations:
for while I fry up the sausage and
peppers (passersby gaze skyward
at the rapidly disappearing comestibles),
younger people are committed
to frying them off (spectators
bid the food adieu as it leaves the pan
on horizontal journeys to wherever),
and a chef on television recently
sautéed down his ingredients, which
must have rendered them revolting;
analogously, citizens that used to simply swap
democracy for dictatorship, now
have to swap them out, in order to reach
a conversational or political objective.

As if on cue, political charlatans appear,
drawing attention to themselves,
drawn by opportunity,
drawing crowds,
drawing upon falsehoods,
drawing support from fools,
drawing blood
but not withdrawing,
while we draw a deep breath
and look to draw comparisons
amid strife, lots of strife,
but pretty much draw a blank.

This might be the time
to take one of my own
scenic and personal trips,
which occur pictographically
in literary gloom;
but the atmosphere is sunny on this occasion
and more like a park,
and the trees are talking among themselves
but they’re talking in German.
Maybe you’re in a German park.
Ah, that would explain it.  I wonder
what the older ones did during the war.
Survive, apparently.
Right, and they were too short then
to provide the German soldiers with shade,
so let’s not chop them down
for being war criminals, or chop them up
for firewood.  In fact,
alles gut, as they murmur
among themselves in the breeze —
everything’s fine.

And they get to stay where they are, separated,
or, as one says now, separated out
by fantasy from the reality I’m stuck with —
turmoil, brutality, and malignant discord
whipped up from shadows into authenticity
by villains and dirtbags, plus those
who have selected bat-shit insanity
as a rewarding life choice,
creating an overall composition too “busy”
for us to focus on much of anything
except abhorrence and terror — all the while
extending our walk, begun months ago,
through the gauntlet of microbial ambush,
where you may be picked off at any time
and tagged for delayed assassination.

And perhaps that has already come to pass.
It might explain the bizarre colloquy
with a figure unknown
to whom I am posing the question:
Why is your thumb in my soup ?
I need to keep it warm.
You’re keeping it warm in my soup ?
Well, if the obvious visual scenario
needs redundant description, then yes, I am,
but just until the soup cools off,
or down, if you prefer.
I’d prefer that you just remove your thumb;
it’s the only lunch they’ll give me.
Did you know it costs £11 to view
a fossilized 9  ^th–century Viking turd
in York, in England ?
This is off the subject.
That’s the equivalent of 14.50 in dollars.
That does seem like a lot.
Also —and I bet you didn’t know this —
your great–great grandfather used to declare
that Populists were ninnies, deluded enough
to think their beloved leader would ever
put their interests ahead of his own.
But here’s the irony: He was talking
about William Jennings Bryan!
How can you possibly know what he said ?
His speeches are on record.
No, my great-great grandfather.
Based on probability.

I wanted to say that my relative died
while Bryan was still a teenager,
that the populist observation must be
about someone else, and said by someone else,
but I couldn’t hear my words;
although I could faintly hear his:
The soup is both too cold to eat now
or to provide warmth for my thumb.
Before it freezes over completely, try drawing the line
between the society you thought you knew
and the one you want no part of,
but which fate may soon swap out for.

We note that my last observation, heard by no one,
is that tweeted wisdom comes only from the birds;
the meaning may not always be clear
but it’s well worth listening to.
I am listening as they draw the curtains.