Catch-539
Catch-539
by Shawn Misener
He liked to imagine that his skin
was made of glass and never to be touched.
He left his subterranean apartment
only for cigarettes and microwavable meals.
He read and re-read a dogeared copy of Catch-22
until all of the pages fell out,
and from those yellowed pages he glued together
a magnificent and confusing mural
on the bathroom wall across from the toilet.
Every time he had a difficult bowel movement
he clutched his knees and screamed “Yossarian!â€
He took showers with Windex and published papers
in academic journals about the absurd state
of his precious internal organs:
His liver was composed of cotton candy
his heart, coffee grounds
his lungs, a folded up Twister board
his stomach, a kerosene space heater
his bladder, an expired debit card
his spleen, a roll of faux-wood contact paper
his colon, a blue length of PVC pipe
his brain, a hopping set of wind-up teeth
his eyes, cherry jelly beans
Encased in glass he took inventory
and pushed away his terrible anxiety.
His last vacation was spent climbing the hunchbacked cherry tree
couched up against his apartment building.
He fell and shattered into 539 pieces
like a postmodern pinata.
The neighborhood dogs sniffed
until they discovered the jelly beans,
which they inevitably licked and passed up.
At first I didn’t like the 2 beginning lines, but reading on, they began to make sense and give a unity to the piece. Very Kafka-esqe.
i second Claudius.
Thanks. This is maybe my favorite poem that I’ve barfed out in the past year or so. maybe it isn’t so good, I dunno.
on the contrary, it’s pretty good.
Misener, you’ve earned the infamous 4 Horsemen of the Adjective Acclamation: “Sinister, Loopity, Hybridled, Prickish!”
I thought it sinister to spoof off a pop-novel and inject laughing gas into those vulturous veins with nano-mirrors by which society might see itself thru an unforgiving microscope composed delicately with a same-faced houses of cards.
The loopiness materializes via Spock-tinkered beam-up a la’ dog chasing its own tail dipped in hot sauce and having his wish granted…a man imagines himself glass and his thoughts make the reality. He shatters into 539 odd shards–a self-fulfilling oraclized victim of his own rat-maze, a product of his own commercially decadent surroundings–the bastard love spawn of a mapless Prometheus & hapless Orpheus equipped with banjo emerging from the downtown Hell of postmodern decay. Circular logic turns into a rotund comedy; Brother, can you spare a chime?
Conjunction Junction, what’s your motherfucking function? Hooking up with MBA ho’s at strip-clubs and truck-stops… Yes, one Yossarian might up the ante himself to 50 lapdances and scarf his limit of 22 byob’s. HYBRIDLED. You ducktape, dodgeball, storytell, poetize, merge melt and make-out with your televised Muse. A sedimentary stream of unconcious conglomerate metamorphosed into Drunken Anatomy/Physiology 101. I’d say this difficult bowell movement may be due to a 5 alarm Tex-Mex chili-fest, but with postmodern pinatas pummeled by so many sugar-coated cohones dangling cabejeros whacking off to Lady Gaga as Chiquita Banana, who has time for public ememas?
Prickish to the core of my very underwear! It intimates smoothie velcro sensations tickling feng shui toy poodles in my brackish subterranean terra firma tablui rasa spaghetti microwave post sex orgy pheromes croc-pot. thx for the read. damn good stuff Gilligan!
Jesus, Quasi! I don’t know what to say, how to say it, or even how to use words. You’ve garbled my mind.