Surrealdada Poems By Jeffrey Zable

These self-described "surrealdada poems" came in over the transom today. The kind of stuff I like. I wonder if I will ever find copies of The Great American Poetry Bake-Off. 

YOUR POEMS

for Robert Peters



Your poems are the eyes

that make worms smile.



Bones bursting

through invisible branches.



Children playing with wire thin rope

that will one day choke them

into middle-aged fears

of death and orgasm.



Flies swarming

onto a blood-stained leg

that is really a clock

disguised as an avalanche.




WAITING IN THE WINGS



The saber-toothed dogs are barking in hell

and I'm alone outside the door.

Could this be an old movie

I forgot to erase?

Could it be my life

as I thought it would be

if I didn't say thank you

to those who brought gifts?

I feel like eating a penguin on seaweed

and washing it down

with a bottle of marbles.

From there it could be anything

from a waltz to a tango--

even a watussi!

At least the natives seem friendly today.

They say they'll pay for any fresh meat

in shells and women.

What could be better

I think to myself

as I give them my fingers and my toes.

I'm ready to be lucky

after all this time

waiting in the wings.



MARK STRAND      


Reading his poetry              

makes me want to commit desperate acts,

check into a mental institution,

or be the 1, 647th person to jump

from the Golden Gate Bridge.

Could there be hope

in a pool of inflammation,

in a room where someone with eyes like saucers

is watching you bleed onto an oriental carpet.

If only you could rise beyond what you feel

where there's no tomorrow,

where the raging clouds

can't out spell out your name

and the mourners can't arrive

because of the hill

that separates an ocean.

No one predicted it would be so dark

and simultaneously so absurd,

that the girl in the blue dress

would bury her doll

in a pile of ashes.

Everything is closed

and the faces are expressionless.

An umbrella opens

and a man runs in circles,

while another points his fingers to his eyes.

You just lie there looking up at the sky

as if were a lake into which you would dive

if you were wearing a swimsuit.

Instead you lie there for all eternity

thinking about your mother

and sometimes your father,

wishing you were never born.


Jeffrey Zable has published poetry and prose in many magazines and anthologies including New York Quarterly, Caliban, Wormwood Review, and Mudfish. He's published five chapbooks including Zable's Fables with an introduction by the late great Beat poet Harold Nose. Present or upcoming work in Mas Tequila, Epigraph, Subliminal Interiors,Toad Suck Review, Owen Wister Review, Clackamas Literary Magazine, Yellow FoxQuarterly, and others.