Outtakes and Non Sequiturs from a longer work still in progress

by Wayne Atherton

On puddle top
at Puddle Dock,
a symphony of rain rings;
the whipsnap of canvas
mast on Gundalow

Down at the docks at night
Sea waves slosh off boat hulls and
Slashed tire buffer bumpers

Picasso twisted torsos
Dali melted time
Eminem made anger chic but
Dylan reigns as king of rhyme

There’s no time for the present

Step out of the film you replaced your life with

Trust died the day
you found a cockroach
happily swimming
in your restaurant wonton soup

Indians knew how to assign names,
thought them all out.  No easy Dick or
Jane but rather Snow Cloud, Violent Foam,
Makes Wise Choices, Has Crooked Penis

Pimp missionaries converting
jungle tribe souls for
Christian Amway booty points

I prefer the company of harlots
to the company of zealots
Bring back one physical object from a dream and
you will have performed an act of real magick

Your name dies on my tongue like a
melting snowflake or
fog touching snow

Making love with clothes on is like
photographing rainbows with black – and – white film

Bent over in a sand garden, an old Zen master
making strokes with his one tong rake

Black Mack truck tire
carves out winter slush
chunks, hurls them onto
passenger side window of
passing black Cadillac

Sudden terminal illness
sneaks up on you — shakes you
like a feisty puppy shakes a
rope toy

A pair of hairy, blood – soaked fists and wrists
emerge from alleyway shadows to be kissed by
bone – white moonlight

Slightly faster than the speed of corpse,
the cold grey fingers of a shadowy phantom
brush against the inside of my skull
on its way out of a dream I won’t recall

Perhaps the dead
wish to be
left alone;
alive, I know
I do