King Louis’ Decapitated Head Jumping Out of a Vowel
Submitted by Haggard & Halloo on April 30, 2007 – 8:23 pm3 Comments
King Louis’ Decapitated Head Jumping Out of a Vowel
By Wolf Larsen
I chop off your head and give it to an abstraction, the color yellow jumps up and dashes your head in a million fast directions, you all chop off your heads – fry them – and present them to Caligula, then a wild hair grows from Pluto to the planet Earth and a thousand seas of bubonic plague kidnap your brain, that’s when the moon swallows your car and everyone’s falling up the sun, everyone becomes a hurricane swarming around and around the planet.
©
Quasimofo does a mean revision. I like it better than the original because I think this piece is just screaming for a more playful sense of direction – the line breaks and other oddities liven it up perfectly. On the other hand, some folks get touchy about others touching up their stuff. Still, the revision is an improvement.
I always appreciate a vivacious title. The imagery is violently picturesque–like a Dali painting. …”the color yellow jumps up and dashes your head in a million directions..”–this line punched me–you’d expect a color red, from blood, but the author sidesteps cliche (and the literal) adding a dash of ‘riddle’ instead. Nicely done Wolf!
Here’s how I might space/line the poem if I had been gifted enough to write it… (we’ll see if it stays where I put it after the ‘submit)…
King Louis’ Decapitated Head Jumping Out of a Vowel
By Wolf Larsen
I chop off your head
and give it to an abstraction,
the color yellow jumps up
and D A S H E S your Head
in a
m i l l i o n
fast directions,
youallchopoffyourheads
– fry them –
and present them to
Caligula,
then a wild hair grows
from Pluto to the planet Earth
and a thousand seas of bubonic plague
kidnap your brain,
that’s when the moon
sw(allows ) your {car }
and everyone’s falling ^^^ up the sun,
everyone becomes a h u r r i c a n e
swarming around
and around
the planet…
i like how surreal this reads. king louis’ head on a pig seems to fit here. the writing does remind me of dan raphael’s work.