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"You wanna see a dead body?"

Facetious, Cyrus takes an Olympian toke,
Wide-eyed, picking skeptically
At that scaborous memory.

"You a fool."

He hisses a fugivitive wisp,
Snickers and squeaks,
"Sans dope-game, Marcellus lethally sealt."

A start, a cough, stammers Cyrus,
"Da, da, da bo' Drama?"

Wrinkles quizzical Ikey in response,
"Damn, dat memory endangers dopamine."

Spent, the sage's billow dissipates in a swell of laughter.

Sunken deep, vision blurs
bobbing simpering moon slightly,
Few stars gasp their luster,
Lasting famished.

Desperate squall sprung through alleys narrow,
assail sirens seranading no Odysseus, wails subsiding,
24-7 crackles the grid
Engorged with niggas grindin'.

II
"I sell moonbeam epiphanies,"
Said sifted through a cackle,
Cyrus fidgets ashy.

The winter makes one ashy,
knuckles, knees, elbows ashy,

Hobnobbin' with scoundrels.
The floundering philanthropist sighs.
While misanthropic that drained teen,
Decked in second hands, tube socks strangling slightly,
Brain straining sound waves pulsating,
Slinks through back aves on the humble.

His little brother, that lisping gimp,
subterranean, seething dormant with all those sibilant sayings,
shrieks in his theater.

III
Others are plucky,
Brimming infectious with pep,
Like the don in his dominion,
Headin' uptown in Uptowns,
Retrograde, rockin the Gumby,
Here stumbles Mr. Mumbles
Feenin' insurgent, lured into his tentacles,
The venom surges.

"Dats swagger, baby"

Breaks in Ikey, dome shorn and stepped,
Smoldering standard relinquished,
Cyrus words "Word" in smoke rings,
Talon-clenched ember glows.
Chain shinin' all colors on some coral reef...
Cyrus gloms together the scenes transpired:
Sloppy seconds, battle royale in the rumbleshack, a tiff or two,
Swills a swig of his patron saint and gurgles,
"It's all gravy."

True Teddy No Teddy Body

True Teddy No Teddy Body,
True Teddy No Teddy Mind,
He speaks in shadows,
He drinks in silence.

True Teddy No Teddy Body,
True Teddy No Teddy Mind,
He needs no momento mori,
He has four eyes of lavender.

True Teddy No Teddy Body,
True Teddy No Teddy Mind,
He is agile like a basiliscus,
He is as quiet as a fog.

True Teddy No Teddy Body,
True Teddy No Teddy Mind,
He walks the path of no contender,
His vigil is unconscious.

Don't Transcend Nothin'

Lashing his last fine gasp,
He stings in blistering silence,
In infamy, this man of stillness,
Stammers untrammeled.

Umbilical is his bilious self-speak,
Meaning the little tubers protruding
From the corpse of the dreck
About to be spent was once supple.

He breaks in bones to forgo body ingrown,
Droops in purge from dreams,
Staking his moment contained,
To puncture her ripened sleep.

She militates his million little trinkets,
Digesting his sounds and scalding
In a bristling furore of limbs,
Giddiness subsides, trascendin' nothin'.

City of Lasers

Gnarled in the furthest reaches of New Jerusalem,
Foundling fidgets a tic inside its cloying caul,
Rife with tweens and Gasolina, Red Bull Vodkas,
The invasion assignment, shcumbags and dockers,
Foundling’s got the blues like his glowing libation.
Chishu, the smiling imp of his soul,
Cradles every tendril of Doom in his Duomo,
Stares at the stars beneath the statue's anonymous vigil,
Knowing a thing or two about zero assoluto,
Off-kilter gaits and obnoxious paroxysm,
Los unloads homogenous vom-bomb.
Him beaming sorriso through the night.

Only Foundling Folds

Little foundling of mucus and strife
Spurts his runny contents awry,
Tends to fissured toe-nails and dirt-stache.
Fashions some subterfuge out of small talk.

Smelling of soot and garlic,
Only foundling folds and hopes for
Altars reeking of blood,
Or a night of no tremble.

He slips in the side,
Panchinkoed through echoes of epoch,
His insect of inhibition nimble, hither and thither,
Reaches the epicenter of his crime and crumbles.

Kitchen Sprite (Unfinished)

Pilfering bristles, wriggling joy, flitting blithely from table top to counter,
Folsey the filcher -- A fornight dead.
"Too much, too soon" they pronounced.
The procession silenced, prostrate at Folsely entombed.
Survived by but a single unbutton.

And his memory trickles like Celestial torture,
Or dissipates --like quiet, vacant labor-- into the linoleom
To disquiet the thoughts of a lonely Visigoth,
Heart sunken at the sight of an even number of toothpicks,
A thimble's worth of tickles no more.

"Theo!" Her rancid voice rives his reverie.
Supper of swampy Hamburger Helper and dirty dishes.
The mind folds and unfolds the scamp's memory,
Smoothing over the furrows of Folsey's likeness,
Hand sadly, soapily circumambulating.

"'Nother cuppa'?" "Why certainly."
Mid-day tea, Theo wary of his guest,
Leif fresh from pagan lands glances askant,
Fidgets in his chair, deploys a smile regarding no one:
He hardly knew the little guy.

Which Waterworld Character Are You?

Sam and Mary arrived home at 1:15 in the morning. The garage door opened obediently, the car was parked, and the keys were hung thoughtfully on their designated hook. The lights shot on, blaring and clinical. The first floor felt stagnant with silence, a silence wafting unassumingly, like a foul odor, and making the inanimate feel all the more inanimate.

Sam rifled through the fridge. Mary took off her coat and slumped on the couch. She bit her lower lip trying to think of something to say.

“Fred doesn’t usually drink that much. I’m surprised,” she said to Sam who was picking apart a drumstick. He grunted in response.

“I’m going to check my Facebook,” he announced excitedly spitting minute flecks of turkey on the counter. He shuffled to the computer and planted himself on his desk chair quivering with excitement as the start-up screen loaded slowly and spitefully.

“I drank quite a bit also,” she said soberly.

“He’s a grown man. He can drink as much as he wants,” he retorted contemptuosly.

Mary sighed. Sam grunted. He clicked Firefox repeatedly as various anonymous programs loaded. “C’mon, c’mon.” Finally a flurry of Firefox windows sprang onto the screen. “Restore previous session, restore previous session. No go away. I don’t want you. I just want this one.” He typed in his email and password four times before finally succeeding in signing in.

“What do you need a Facebook for? You’re 42 years old,” she asked more to herself than Sam. “I mean shouldn’t the internet connect you with the new places, new ideas. It just seems so…redundant.”

“Ooo friend request!” he trumpeted. It was Varner from accounting. A real pain in the ass. One of those handsome, perpetually clean-cut, brown-nosing younger guys who are always on top of things. You’ve been working for the company for over 10 years now and he’s going to get promoted before you. His teeth are all aligned perfectly and sparkling white. He just acts so calm and composed all the time. Can’t reproach him for anything. Just makes you hate him all the more. Accept.

“42 friends,” he told his wife proudly. He coveted his horde of “friends” like talismans warding off an impending disaster.

“You’re like talking to a brick wall when you’re on that thing,” his wife said, her annoyance glossing over another emotion which ran deeper and, she feared, would never amount to anything. “Well, I’m going to bed.”

She walked to her room, removed the linens from the hamper, and began folding. Each sheet smoothed carefully, each fold feeling more rueful and desperately symmetrical than the next.

22 years. Maybe she shouldn’t have married so young. She hadn’t even finished college. Sam was always just kind of there. A burly anchor. He had his oafish charm. They had their fun too. That impetuous period of one’s life where consequences, no matter how looming, always seem tangible, finite. Now the choices she made, no matter how trivial, seemed to carry on a cladenstine, subterranean life. Their reverberations were never drastic. Never a disaster, only a pang. It was a choice to marry Sam, but she did not choose the fear which drove her too it. The fear of endless flux, drifting, was too much to bear even at 20. She remembered being on her grandfather’s boat as a child and staring into the water. Late at night, the impenetrable marine blackness, its true nature opaque.

She carried the extra sheets and pillow cases to the closet.

Sam had, quite simply, been there. He felt more “there” than any other man she knew. He wasn’t the most handsome nor was he witty or informed; he could make her laugh but only during those years when he was prone to spontaneity. His spontaneity subsided soon after entering the real world - a hard worker with no real ambition.. He enjoyed what men are supposed to enjoy and did so by rote. And yet, and yet…

“I’m the Mariner! Kevin Costner. I’m the Mariner from Waterworld! What Waterworld character are you! It’s a Facebook quiz. You should take it!” he shouted from the other room startling Mary.

She folded his underwear and pretended not to hear. In that panicked moment she truly hated him, if only for a second. Hatred wasn’t something she thought she was capable of feeling at this point in her life. It was an emotion too pungent to savor for long. Time had bored into her mind the pointlessness of harboring any hatred. Yet it felt exciting for the moment. What a strange, fleeting thrill it was, the memory of it soon suffocated as Mary lyed down on her bed. She closed her eyes and patiently awaited sleep. A few minutes later she felt her husband drop beside her like a bag of sand. She pretended to be asleep. The clink of his belt buckle and a great yawn nauseated her. She felt at ease.

“I had a good time tonight. I had a really good time tonight…Fred was pretty tipsy…You’re still prettier than Danielle. You’ll always be prettier than Danielle,” he assured her, indifferent to whether she was asleep or awake. He kissed her on the cheek and said, “I love you.” She murmured something back.

The day after tomorrow was garbage day. Jessie and Mark would be coming home from the Poconos. She’d hold off grocery shopping for another day; there were eggs and she could make stir-fry for dinner. Bon Jovi was on Ellen and there was a new 30 Rock. Her bed would still be soft and the shower pressure would still be just right. She would never be fully submerged, asleep or awake, and she would never drift. She was protected.

Little Pigs of India (complete with annotations, introduction, and reflection)

Before you undertake the staggering endeavor of reading “Little Pigs of India”, I would like to give a brief account of the circumstances under which it was written. The year was 1954, I was stationed in Algiers with the 44th Battalion of the Parachute division of the French Army. I had just achieved the rank of colonel and was leading an infantry of 40,000 men against the insurrectionists. I awoke one night bathed in sweat and intolerably parched. I walked to the sink to fill my glass when I espied in the distance a group of my infantrymen doing squats, cavorting, gamboling, and bantering with a ribald glee. At that moment I felt so proud of those chaps that I dropped my thermos, stepped on some shards of glass, and ran to my table to write “Little Pigs of India” bleeding all the while. It was the first poem I had ever written and, I don’t believe it would overstating the case to say it changed the very complexion and trajectory of the medium. It essentially introduced a new kind of poetics , a peerless patois of selfless gallantry and daring reportage, at once an infinitely complex tapestry of visceral humanity (or pig-manity) and a bittersweet paean to human (or pig) folly, a caustic indictment of contemporary mores segueing into an iridescent spectrum of emotion imagistically rendered through the prism of both the toiling everyman and the haggard malcontent. So without further ado, I present my masterpiece, my magnum opus, my child:

Little Pigs of India
by Nicholas Paul Castellucci

Onward, onward you noble swine*!
Tonight in hell shall we dine.
Mounted on elephants no bigger than a dog,
We shall defeat the enemy†, three cheers for the hog.

Our names will be forever engraved,
And roads in our honor‡ will duly be paved.
We cannot mow a lawn nor rent a movie.
But we can defend our land in armor groovy.

We will soar the peak of bleating heroics.
Despite our triumph, the pig remains stoic §,
We have no paws, nor feet, nor claws
But we’d rather die than on our bellies crawl ‖.

A Reflection

It is imperative that the reader keep in mind that this poem is not based on actual events, but is rather an imaginative account of a group of very brave anthropomorphic pigs who, in the face of adversity, fought valiantly for the honor and security of their brethren. Exegesis of this poem has been equivocal, naturally. Scholars have offered many disparate interpretations of my poem. I would advise the first-time reader to peruse the poem several times before endeavoring to interpret it.

The first time you read it should be just for fun. Don’t focus too much on the meanings of words (which are frequently esoteric) and just try to get a feel for the rhythm of the poem. This way you can acclimate your mind to nebulous intensity of this harrowing work. On the second reading I would recommend you pay specific attention to the meter of the poem. I, Monroe, was extremely innovative in my utilization of meter. Being the iconoclast I am, I have never enjoyed adhering to convention so I at once rejected the standard convention of meter characterized by any sort of alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables and instead decided that every vowel would be read as stressed, except for the first syllable of “countrymen” in the seventh line and the second syllable in “defend” in the twelfth line. Tottering on the edge of the insecure precipice of overemphasis, I succeeded in imbuing my poem with a powerful overtone of impending destruction undergirded by the enigmatic suspicion that true resolution and revelation is found in irresolution. The speaker, who we can rightly assume is the leader of the pigs ( I imagined him to be a lowly foot-soldier who rose to prominence through sheer cunning and displays of valor) feels the weight of his duty to bolster his soldier’s morale and must therefore enunciate clearly and vehemently every word of his exhortation.

Thucydides in his “History of the Peloponnesian War” poignantly illustrates the importance of being elocutionarily adept as a leader. Needless to say, Thucydides was an endless font of inspiration when writing “Little Pigs of India”. In addition to Thucydides, I drew heavily from an array of different Ancient Greek sources including Xenophon and Herodotus. For instance the line “tonight is hell shall we dine” paraphrases a statement attributed, perhaps apocryphally, to the Spartan King Leonidas who says “tonight we dine in hell.” This is borrowed from Herodotus and can be heard in 300. Some critics, most notable Patel Varner, have censured me, Monroe, for having a supposedly Indian pig refer to hell which is not a salient feature of the Hindu religion. Setting aside the fact that these pigs are not, in fact, from India (I will elaborate later), I feel that as a poet I do not have to assume the duties of a journalist. I have long ago cast off the shackles of paltry verisimilitude and the transparent pretensions of objectivity; as a writer my main mission is to report subjective experience with the conscientiousness and nuance to which I owe my craft.

Drake Fulton once said of “Little Pigs of India”, “The imagery which Monroe conjures is wrought with poetic tension but also rendered with a brash prosaic candor which is perhaps the pivot of the entire poem.” I wholeheartedly agree with Prof. Fulton’s appraisal and believe the poem derives its dynamism from the use of verbs. I always use verbs to express a sort of action. For me, a verb is always unlike a noun. If one studies my poetry carefully, one will glean that I rarely if ever use a verb to denote an object. Verbs in my poetry always describe what an object does rather than what it is in any Platonic or nominal sense of the word. At the time “Little Pigs of India was published, most poets could only muster only so much courage as to use one or two verbs at the most. Most poets were downright afraid to use action-oriented words lest the audience become overwhelmed or offended. I was bold enough to include words like “defeat” and “fight”, words which convey the aggressive nature of these intrepid pigs. Because of my flagrant use of verbs, I initially had a hard time finding a periodical to publish the work. McCarthyism was still in its heyday and verbs were considered “seditious and un-American.” It was thought that use of verbs would lead to Communist activity, so I had a hard time getting my poem published in America. More on this later.

Another significant topos which [The manuscript ends here. Basil Monroe was found on July 7th, 2009 alone in his one room apartment in the upper east side of Manhanttan with a bullet lodged in his brain. The autopsy confirmed that it was suicide. He was survived by his Armenian Grandmother who seems to have a vague recollection of him. The DMV stated that replacing him will not be a great challenge and he will be somewhat missed.

Forensics have discovered the endnotes to “Little Pigs of India” under his bathtub:

* Swine, another word for pig, an animal not found in a zoo, but sometimes found in a petting zoo. They are pink and commonly regarded as cute (when children). Sometimes used as a pejorative term to describe someone slovenly or rude.

† The enemy is ambiguous throughout the poem. I intentionally avoided describing the enemy to imply that the enemy is really in our own minds. This sense of uncertainty permeates the entire tone of the poem and is cleverly juxtaposed to resolute nature of the pigs’ courage.

‡ If pigs did pave roads then I imagine they would commemorate the deeds of other heroic pigs. Some might accuse me of having a Eurocentric view in this regard — that I am chauvinistically importing certain staples and canons of human (specifically Western European) society into my imaginary pig society without bothering to take into account the unique circumstances of anthropomorphic pigs. I believe pigs would most likely base their society on a Smithean paradigm.

§ Stoicism was a predominantly Hellenistic school of though founded by Zeno of Citium in the 3rd century BC. A solemn, quasi-religious philosophy based on being in moral harmony with the universe. Stoicism emphasized the necessity of having full mastery over your emotions and the inter-workings of the mind. This is one of the sillier lines in the poem as the whole notion of a pig being stoic is just ridiculous.

‖ After much deliberation I finally settled on this last ennobling image of a pig who would rather die than suffer under the yolk of his adversaries. The spirit of these pigs is powerful and can pull many a human through hard times. I myself feel if I were one of these pigs, if I had even a modicum of the courage and resiliency which these pigs possess perhaps I too could one day do something momentous!

Untitled

She’ll tell you something about herself.
If the time is right, if the space is intimate.
If the lights are dim and forgiving.
A few drinks in and a sudden candor, words are nervous,
But entirely her own.
Soon deflated by darting pupils, she slumps listlessly into the cushions,
Cool and tense,
Blanketed in silence.

The congestion feigned cheer, their glittering glasses and false smiles,
The corners of this place terminate fugitive thoughts by rote,
Glints of diversion cannot temper the imagination.
Our instant beauty from the corner of his eye, juts an aquiline nose, scope expands, Long sandy hair, tremulously aware of a sallow being,
Eyes which plead and stray.
Borne forward by champagne, gravity drains the void.

Exiled by lights, pacified in a room quite and neglected,
A man in his fifties is generally incongruent.
Too situated to meander,
He ferments and takes recourse in a poise long since broken into.
His violence is indistinct, barely kindled.
So strange, during these flickering years,
To be alone, now, with her: so young and feline.
(“I’m not what I seem.”)
Less frail than the fraility which her supple limbs communicate.
Meanings metered like syllables, she treads lightly to draw nearer.

The bosomy leather and the acerbic gin ramify evocations incompatible.
Memories deployed, met at an impasse, enemies bathed in night.
Remove the mask — he’s just as gaunt, same sunken cheeks, same doeful stare,
Only now, a creature.
And in his eyes: splayed form.

Musk invasive and fatherly.
In the sarcophagus, the child she once was,
The nemesis she’s always been.
Come, melt in his clutch, rehearse again what will be again.
Shrivel and be real, quiveringly real.

The flames out, the wistful wisp of afterthought,
Pungent breath stinging, nostrils flared, odors emitting from the byzantine mechanism of late-middle age,
Behold our frayed puppet.

Time contracts an arid space.
Spiral softly and you do the talking.
“You’re not what you seem.”
There’s a crowd of people out there, exhumed, reanimated.
"Really you’re not.”
Back to the ballet, back to clockwork, back to pockets.
Left unabsolved and teased apart: “Don’t go.”
Clean your wounds…back to pity.

Another Man's Heart: A Dark Fo[r]rest

Characters – Jimmy Stewart, 101, a decrepit relic of a nearly forgotten era helplessly inundated by the tides of time.

Forrest Dearth - 28, disillusioned and apathetic, a man for his time.

Act 1, Scene 1

(Interior: Whole Foods. Forrest vociferously gobbles free samples of strawberries. Jimmy Stewart notices and confronts him.)

Jimmy Stewart – Really liking those strawberries are ya’?

(Forrest does not respond.)

Jimmy – You know they’re for sale. Special, $3.99. Why you could have a strawberry smorgasbord!

(Forrest scowls at Jimmy.)

Jimmy - Listen hoss, I think you’ve had enough.

Forrest – Look, I do what I want.

Jimmy - Oh is that right?

Forrest – Yeah. I’m just gonna’ keep eating these strawberries.

Jimmy – (pleading) Listen, sir, I, I know you’re hungry. Sometimes I get so hungry, why, why I could eat a horse! But, you just can’t keep eating the free samples. Those are for all of our customers. Now we encourage you to eat a few, but if you just keep going on like this, well, there isn’t gonna’ be enough for everybody, is there?

Forrest – (brazenly) I don’t care about the other customers. I repeat, I do what I want. You’re not even a blip on the radar for me. I’m going to keep eating these strawberries because they’re available. I enjoy strawberries and I’d rather not have to pay for them.

Jimmy – Have you no sense of decency? You can’t just go through life like this. We live in a society, with laws and strictures of etiquette. Without law, all we have is anarchy. Is that the kind of world you want? Is that the kind of world you want your children to grow up in?

Forrest – (laughing dismissively) I’m not having children. I had a vasectomy. I don’t want to bring any more life onto this miserable pile of dirt. Now either get me some sugar or get the fuck out of here!

Jimmy – Oh, so you want me to scram do ya? Had enough of uncle, have we? Listen, I think your outlook on life is mighty selfish. You’re not gonna’ get very far with these wrong-headed little precepts of yours.

Forrest – (sneering) Ha, you are so naïve, man. Not gonna get very far? Well you haven’t gotten very far as an altruistic simpleton. Look at you. Haven’t you ever read any Ayn Rand? Altruism has led to the downfall of mankind.

Jimmy – Oh, put a cork in it, Ayn Rand is a contrived, vapid little ninny. And you don’t know a goddamned thing about me or my life, mister, not a goddamned thing. I was a fighter pilot in World War II. I got a purple heart for the love of bacon. I’ve also starred in over 35 films spanning from 1935 – 1986.

Forrest – (surprised) Wait, you were in World War II? Shouldn’t you be dead or retired?

Jimmy – (flustered) Don’t you worry about that. I’ve had just about enough! You know what? Fuck you! That’s right, fuck you! I’ve had to deal with people like you my entire life – self-styled nihilists, mad at the world because you never got a hand out, because your Mother didn’t breast-feed ya, or ya didn’t get that shiny red bicycle y’always wanted for Christmas, or your socks are too tight, or you’re just angry at the world because you can’t even find a good reason to be angry! (Breathing heavily) You’re a germ, a herpe, putrid encrusted smegma decaying under the oily fat fold of society! I hate you! I hate you! (Breathing heavily.)

Forrest – (concerned and with strawberries in his mouth) Hey man, are you all right? I’m sorry. I won’t eat any more of the strawberries. Just calm down.

Jimmy – (Trying to pronounce something between exasperated breathes.) Gimme-uh, gimme-uh, gimme-uh…

The End