Surreal-Absurd Sampler Judson Hamilton
"These poems are from a manuscript I’m working on called The Vogue for Flatness, so we’re still learning about one another. Poems for me are a way to filter the world, to make sense of it, to live in it. Perhaps it’s having been raised in suburbia or a childhood steeped in comics and cable TV, but there seems to me no other honest way to do this than through the surreal, absurd, and grotesque." - Judson Hamilton
Wetware
The sex bots are out in droves tonight
Don’t let that keep you from
Booking us a two-top
At the sushi place with the good roe
Deepsea exploration is as remote
As the curiosity of others
On a modern factory line
Searching another’s face or
Hot hands under a blanket
Are reserved for the relative privacy
Of the dormitory after lights out
It’s exactly that sort of brutal shift work that
Conspires to keep us apart
In this century and beyond
Like the arranged marriages of yore
But don’t worry – no Silicon Valley chieftain is gonna separate us
Not if my TL has anything to say about it
Wishbone
I check to make sure this is the right place
A success notification assures me it is
I’ve earned 2 heart credits
Do I want to see my account status?
I silence it and look around
A Chinese place, a hippy shop, a pharmacy
I think about leaving – then see her
She is wearing clothes that I recognize as
Being fashionable
By how often I saw variations of them
On the subway down here
We are half a meter from one another
I can hear my anxiety ticking
She swings her arms awkwardly in my direction
I raise my arms and interlock with another
It is warm and close and we both know
That it must come to an end
Although we genuinely don’t want it to
We unlock and stand apart
Staring at one another and drawing patterns in the dirt with our feet
Time passes. The wind kicks up. And we move on.
Do I want to rate this interaction?
Poena medicinals
My emotions are a tyranny
Of capricious sprites
Getting wild on piccolos
(Don’t you know so?!)
Placed in a stockade
With a lock just out of reach
(For my own good, they say
To teach me a lesson, they say)
The music school’s gotten a full makeover
And looks more artificial than ever
Gone is the gritty realism and reckless abandon
Of high moods and low terrors
Gone are the whisperings of betrayal
And persecution
Now the facade is immaculate
Free of blemish
Singing only the most innocuous of tunes
It is hoped that I will take to the cure
The school preaches inclusivity
Even for the wayward and those that have strayed, they say
Their goal is to bring me back into the fold, they say
So that we may all sing a song each to each, they say
God grant me the serenity
Judson Hamilton lives in Wrocław, Poland. His most recent work includes a book of short stories Gross in Feather, Loud in Voice and a book of poems The New Make-Believe both with Dostoevsky Wannabe. For a more extensive bibliography of his work please visit his website https://neutralspaces.co/judson_hamilton/
