Aaron Kent Surreal-Absurd Sampler
For me, the surreal and the political should go hand in hand, even if not immediately clear. The subversion of tropes and reaction against hegemonic standards presents an opportunity to make readers see the world, and therefore their allegiances, with fresh eyes. I find it aggravating when people suggest surrealism moves work away from the ‘serious’. when surrealism’s most impressive attribute is to exemplify the serious by correlating it with the absurd. Through surrealism, I write connected to activism, connected to absurdity, and connected to art.
—Aaron Kent
OH NO, I STILL HAVEN’T FOUND MY SPARKLE
Imagine waking up in the belly of a dinosaur,
the thought has kept me busy
on hot days in Leicester,
but how would I know?
I don't even live there
and have never been.
I've never met Boo Radley either,
but I still like to think of him as my dad.
I’ve begun believing in ghosts,
I tell them that they can haunt
with the best of 'em. Sometimes
I haunt myself, I re-read the messages
I sent from my death bed. A digital Ouija.
I've never felt so connected
to somebody so disconnected
but science is excellent.
I'd argue green is the best colour,
though, unfortunately for Green, yellow exists.
I keep thinking we left the door open,
but there isn't one – we’re outside again.
I'm just dreaming of dying, one year on
from the last time I saw you cry.
EVERYONE IS A COMEDY LOST ON THE WAY HOME
I cannot tell if I am real,
or if I am just an avatar
eating myself from the inside.
I’ve been this close
before, my hand only inches
away from my neck.
Nothing makes grief
more therapeutic
than humor, or distance.
Paint is quickly coming up from
underneath the kitchen table leaving
a small chip here and a seam there.
PANCHO MAKES MEDICINE FROM STEM CELLS
When I write in 1st person I dream
of dying.
When I write in 3rd person I dream
of long walks
five hundred meters below sea level.
O, grey wolf on white, let me see
mighty elephants,
let me see how to cremate what we lost
and present it
as light forming through a stormy sky.
SCABIES VS PREDATOR
The sky is on fire.
The light of the sun seems too big.
It is falling through the ceiling
to the floor
and the whole ceiling seems to be on fire,
and the basement and the family room,
and the entire bathroom
and my living room
and my bedroom
and the stairwell and the kitchen is on fire.
Everything is in slow motion.
Everything is a pool of fire and smoke.
There is nothing in the universe
but a seething, engulfing ocean of flame.
And then the universe turns into a diamond.
The sun is a diamond.
The sky is a diamond.
The air is a diamond.
The moon is a diamond.
The planets are diamonds.
The constellations are diamonds.
There is nothing in the universe
but a seething, engulfing ocean of diamonds
and, just as the diamonds become suns
I wake up.
My bed is surrounded by snoring stray cats.
I have a single sheet on the bed and my quilt is on the floor.
I'm covered in cat hair, my shirt is sticking to me,
my skin is stuck to my sheets.
I crawl across the floor to my bathtub.
I get in and wash myself with snow.
I wash myself with snow.
I STILL LOVE YOU
A dead bug
was on the table.
I ate it and threw up.
I couldn't sleep.
A white cat was sitting
on the edge of the bed,
next to me.
I gave it a warm catnip nap
and then screamed at it
to get off the bed,
to leave.
A bird flew
into the bedroom
through an open window.
I climbed out
of the open window
in my nightshirt
and tied a rope
around my waist.
I went in the kitchen window
and drank all the milk
from the pitcher.
I went to the neighbours
and asked if they wanted
any milk.
Then I went to the police station,
told them I saw some man
jumping in and out of the bushes,
and I asked them if they wanted
some milk.
Then I went to my brother’s house
and knocked on the door
and a woman answered
and I asked her if she wanted
any milk.
Then I went to my backyard
and found a praying mantis,
I picked it up
and put it in my mouth.
I thought about sleeping,
I put the mantis corpse
in a dish of cold lasagne
on the kitchen counter.
The same white cat
I had seen on the nightstand
was sitting on the counter.
I kept it because it wanted
the milk.
YOUNG DIE AND YOU TOLD
In a cooler climate
there'd be snowmen in the bedroom,
standing guard round the corners
of thirteen angels.
You imbue a butterfly:
for you sleeping is easy,
it's the hours awake
that drag.
Aaron Kent is a working-class writer, stroke survivor, and insomniac from Cornwall. His 2nd collection, The Working Classic, is available from the87press. He has read his poetry for The BBC, The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, and Stroke Association, had work published in various journals, and is an Arvon tutor. His poetry has been translated into languages including French, Hungarian, German, Cymraeg, and Kernewek, and has been set to music.
