Prose Cartoons and Poetry By Adam Engel

Adam Engel lives in NYC, where he studied and taught at several universities, administered corporate systems, published numerous poems, stories, essays, articles and four books, Topiary, Cella Fantastik, and I Hope My Corpse Gives you the Plague, and most recently, root (Oliver Arts & Open Press, 2016).


Terrible No Beauty


Transformed utterly: indeed it was transformed.


Terrible no beauty:  cinder mountain's majesty blown ember waves.


Mother is carbon.  I knew her as skin.


Like I recall that car I’d sweated hours to possess.  Like I recall my wife:  my  lover’s knees: the postman’s odd resemblance to my daughter: the colorful Everythings before light haemorrhaged. 


Flooding melt of too much so-much: disintegration-fade. 


It was all just skin.


Same old same old: idiots with matches playing god: igniting sudden-empty: silent-breathless: burnt black Dawn. 


Grisly.  The Sun also rises -- counterfeit coined -- behind a pall.


Hands no longer look like hands nor eyes resemble what eyes once knew. 

Transformed:  transformed utterly to turds of coal: the world a marshmallow of burn dropped dead from Mother’s iron womb.


Sere after-earth. Spit on the ashes. Your white hot stumps.  





Cursive Fortune Cookie


Before ideas went bad: before ridiculous notions of generals in hats: my Shadow fled the mirror: zip-zap-gone: god-knows-where...

I'd made an impression: or dream-imagined memories of Me vague-brief as sleep.

Woke up devastated and alarmed: the 20 years that passed through Night were Yesterday ten years ago.  Had been. Was. 

Failing to cultivate Selective Consciousness I remain mired in situations on the ground.





Fruit of Occur 


Despair distilled of sad. Wine of Know turned vinegar Now.  

Fruit of occur: no scent no bloom: origin empty.

Matter – stark mad dark – metastasized: full-bloat increase unto pregnant Void. 

Those who invent History tend to delete it.  Eradicate you with a mouse-click keystroke dead-link subject to oversight by Editors who hate you.

There was a Time: it's gone.

But On Sale Today through Next Time: pain-kill pills and terror: theft of Identity construct (bureaucro-systemic amnesia).

They'll slash yer credit to yer toe-nails –  postmortems rarely  pay-up. They'll render you post facto: DNA unclaimed: your name null-void: a number irrational beyond equation: illegible to  machines.  

So here's your Now now: enjoy: don't blow a bender play it safe: choose door one-two: sell lady mortgage tiger.  Time is money-season: ticktock-tick a bomb. 

Burn in infer.



Punctuation Space


First things first is figure out who you were.  Punctuation space: hiatus of character – still: yet: again.  The cracked Eternal over-easy.   Infinite Ever-After.

Vape of e-lectronic cigarette the clock-watcher's impatient suck: killing (at least wounding? hardly a scratch really) Time. 

Before page-glut deletion-crunch per data-measures of Determine: before everything useless crumpled tossed. 



Hat Club

For the last time I implore you:
please restrict your hat:
forbid it entry to the hat-club.

Correct me if I'm wrong again 
but:  say you're sorry. 
And for god-sake mean it:
all will be forgiven.

I love you dearly 
darling
tell me what you're thinking. 
Darling:
tell me what you feel.