amphibi.us

I.

After my thirtieth birthday party
When the hullabaloo had died down
To a soft ebb that made us feel
Like transparent jellyfish on a
Summer ocean, me and my Holmes,
The bandleader who had always sniffed
Out the truth (now thirty with me
Wearing the beard of a prophet
And dirty pants of a maintenance man),
Settled down on the steps of the deck
To participate in true freedom, which is never
A done deal, but, always a dialectic
That approximates the stumbling towards truth.

II.

Our parents and teachers ruined us
Was the proposition from my singularly
Esteemed detective, and, I almost indulged
My tendency to balance arguments (as Devil’s right hand)
Until I thought about the soap operas and cartoons
That had subverted my mental immune system
And replicated virally in my neural networks
Until, as I realized at this late date
I felt safe in the rapist’s embrace.

III.

Laughing: foolish and free from the grasp of the past
I said I would watch The Price is Right with an endless tray
Of food to gag on until bright lights and dollar signs
And things-you-don’t-need-to-work-for-being-given-to-you
Seemed as natural as flowers.

He told me how his mind had been sodomized
By the flat-and-happy: the job we figured now
Was to scrub our brains clean, which, actually
Seemed nary a paradox, because our minds
Were sludge islands built upon the pearl of curiosity
Awash in a sea of garbage.

© Peter Fernbach, 2010