The Synthetic Creature

A free-form prosy poem. Listen to 'Echoes' by Pink Floyd. At about 1 minutes the bends happen, and that's where this poem lives.

Sometimes I imagine

I was butchered by some bear-maker who

left me at the stuffing station a bit too long, and 

fear I’ll rupture from the fluff. I almost want to

spill my guts out on a prehistoric rock

And paint something for them.

I’m starving for the country that no one sees, for

The jewels of cities in the outstretched distance

that glint across a Mojave valley, for

alien metropolises with women who’ve never seen the country or the sea,

never heard an acoustic song and never cooked a meal without

a microwave, so I can lure one to the Pacific Ocean and

admit it’s just my second favorite, so I can buy kabobs in

a glass blown marketplace and insist they’re my invention.

Guitar bends rip holes in the universe and travel back through time,

Displacing my intestines up my throat,

And I don’t want to put them back! I want the synthetic hand that riffs

on me through Pink Floyd’s ‘Echoes’ to absolve me,

to roast me, to drag me in a pulpy fractured mess

across the chalky desert floor, as ancient men and women line

the freeway that’s no longer there and watch this canary-leaking

human splayed and squeezed of all his life on a plot of dusty swarm.

I want to carve a panel out of some clay-choked cliff,

and tunnel through to another age, offer

service as a seer, and tease painted children with stories of a

path so river-wide, and a village so river-high, with tales of how

The goddess eyes on sky-scaled tapestries replace the

sparks that dance in showers to her likeness,

and how the fumes replace the rain, and how

a whisper can cross oceans faster than a tidal wave.

I want to promise I’ll remember them when I go back,

even if I'm the only one, that I’ll survive for them and learn

for them and reach out into electronic distortion for them to

the very end, where I can whisper anywhere and give the tour.

Right now my microwave is acting out: she doesn’t have positive

opinions. My house can’t remember the desert it stands on.

The wind kicks up and something chimes. Bends. I haven’t been to the

sea in quite some time. I catch a whiff of salt, and begin to writhe and

bubble up again, in my synthetic creature way.

Reviews

[KWP]

Hey - I was recently in America - and the desert for a holiday and whilst travelling I actually thought about the imagery you have put into this writing
'alien metropolises with women who’ve never seen the country or the sea,
never heard an acoustic song and never cooked a meal without
a microwave, so I can lure one to the Pacific Ocean'

this particular line grabbed me as I actually wondered, in some of the little towns I travelled through how many people were ALIVE and how many just EXISTED!

I like this, I like the words and the picture painted ... synthetic - yes that was indeed another thought ... that though came from Hollywood and Beverly Hills :) no offence intended..

nice words, meaning and message xx

[KWP]

Please read 'Red Cloud Road' it was the first poem I posted here ... i wrote it about Arizona ... love to hear your thoughts x

[Daniel Dawes]

Vivid and a good read. Enjoyed it all and can't fault it. Thanks for sharing your poem :)