Surreal-Absurd Sampler Marcus Slease

We are just getting started with our surreal-absurd feature. In the coming weeks, we have some stellar poems from Vik Shirley and Chrissy Williams. Here is a selection of my own poems, from my collection The Green Monk (Boiler House Press).

The poems in The Green Monk are sometimes in conversation with surrealist painters (such as Leonora Carrington, Salvador Dali, and Max Ernst), employ various methods of collage, and engage in absurdist narratives (partly inspired by the American surrealist-absurdist poet James Tate). This selection includes two poems in conversation with the surrealist paintings of Dali, two collage poems using found material, and two absurdist narrative poems.

BURNING GIRAFFE

After Salvador Dalí’s painting Burning Giraffe, 1937 

Flowers devour a man. It floats and sinks. Floats and sinks. A river of red runs through it. Close your eyes. Are you only dreaming. Houseflies and horseflies hang on joints of meat teaching their young to fly. The windows sweat and sweat. Hard rain on the outside. Warm air on the inside. When you ain’t got no flowers, you got the blues. When you ain’t got no flowers, you got the blues. When you ain’t got no flowers, you got the blues. When you ain’t got no flowers, you got the blues. A burning giraffe in the distance. Sprinkle it with dew and a miracle or two. Wrap it in a sigh. Soak it in the sun. It sinks and floats. Sinks and floats. It is eternal flame and sunshine thru the rain.

ANCIENT ELEPHANTS 

After Salvador Dali’s Painting One Second Before the Awakening from a Dream Provoked by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate, 1944 

A misty rain. Swelling slugs. A buzzing out the window. First there is one bee. Then a hundred. Then thousands. So many bees. There is a pomegranate on the ground and the bees are buzzing around it. A fish sprouts from the pomegranate. Then a tiger sprouts from the fish. Then another tiger sprouts from that tiger. Pretty soon I am going to die. The bees stop buzzing. A tall woman with closed eyes leans on a hazel stick. She points to the sky. This is your elephant she says. It is an ancient elephant. It walks on giant stilts. I am too low. It is too high. I will have to watch it go by. 

GREAT EXPECTATIONS

I’m afraid of getting my soul sucked. I’ve had my soul sucked. Have you had your soul sucked? Where did you get your soul sucked? Who sucked your soul and why did they suck your soul? Soul sucking is voluntary. And sometimes involuntary. How many souls have you sucked? How many people have sucked your soul? When will you stop sucking souls? Do you want to stop sucking souls? When did you first start sucking souls? Do you prefer sucking souls or having your soul sucked? If soul sucking stopped tomorrow what would you suck? Would you stop sucking? What was your favourite soul suck? What is your average soul suck? How many soul sucks do you prefer per day? How many souls can you suck at one time? When you suck a soul how do you feel before and after? When you have your soul sucked do you think of sucking someone else’s soul? What do you think about when sucking a soul or having your soul sucked?

THE LOVELY BONES

The local priest held a festival once a month for youthful vigour.  He made everyone kiss the turtle in his box. One day the centipedes caught on. They invaded the big box full of the bones of youthful vigour. They lined up their centipede bodies and ate the priest. They made a new turtle. The new turtle was called William Butler Yeats.

BLACK HOLE

I stepped inside the wooden restaurant. A hurly burly man came to the dinner table. He was tall and also bearded. He took my girlfriend and they had their way with each other. I cannot grow any taller I said. But I can grow a beard. And thus began the beard growing. I have to shave my neck I said. It gets too itchy. Fair enough she said. I have to shave around my lips I said. I don’t like hair in my mouth. Fair enough she said. Many years went by. My beard was very long. I must have won. I was inside a log cabin. The log cabin was in the hands of a small boy. I looked out of the log cabin. It was a jungle of carpet. It was so thick. It must have been the seventies. Disco hits were spinning somewhere in another room. And thus I began my journey with a plastic knife. I hacked my way through the carpet. It was very itchy. I reached the kitchen. My beard trailing along the ground. Where do I come from? Where am I going? Why am I here? The universe has an ancestor. Another universe. Born inside a black hole. The universe reproduces with black holes. No black holes means no reproduction. You need a black hole. Where is your black hole? Only survival of the fittest. Black holes. I must find my black hole I said. I climbed the cupboard and reached a very bulky microwave. I stepped inside. The radio waves whooshed. Ding. I woke up inside an 80’s microwave. It was smaller. The radio waves whooshed. Ding. I woke up inside a millennium microwave. The microwaves were getting smaller. They were evolving. The big bang is now the big bounce. The universe is a wave. The universe is a string theory. An unexplained patch of nothing in cosmic microwave background radiation. I stepped back inside. I bounced around. I was a real human. 

WILD MAN

I am not a manly man. The manly men wear studly belts. The beepers sit on their studly belts. The beepers buzz. It is a very strong buzz. It is very studly. I do not have a beeper. I am not a stud.  I open the door to my Metro. My Metro runs on two small horses. It is also an electric insect. It buzzes around the mountain. It is not a studly Metro. She hands me a small round ball. It is a mouth grenade. It is a  small round ball of raw meat.  I look at my ball. Dora chews her ball. Come on she says. Chew your ball. I can see you are a wild man. Deep down she says. I open the door to my small red Metro. The Metro is an electric insect. It buzzes down the mountain. I step inside Dora’s living room. There are three cacti pots on her glass table. I like cacti she says. Cacti are wild she says. I walk toward the cacti. They are prickly and manly. I pick them up one by one. Hordes of wee flying insects are buzzing around them. I squish one. Then ten. Then twenty. A hundred more come. We can’t win I say. We can never win she says. 

Born in Portadown, Northern Ireland, Marcus Silcock (formerly Slease) has made his home in Turkey, Poland, Italy, South Korea, the United States, Spain, and the United Kingdom – experiences that inform his nomadic surrealist writing. He comes from a working class background and teaches high school in Barcelona. He is the author of Never Mind the Beasts (Dostoyevsky Wannabe), The Green Monk (Boiler House Press), and Play Yr Kardz Right (Dostoyevsky Wannabe), among others. Find out more at: Never Mind the Beasts and follow him on Twitter @postpran

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