BECAUSE SO MUCH IS RIDING ON YOUR UNICYCLE Read online



  Because So Much

  Is Riding

  On Your Unicycle

  Nathaniel S. Rounds

  Fowlpox Press

  ©MMXII Nathaniel S. Rounds

  All Rights Reserved

  ISBN: 978-0-9879561-2-5

  Contents:

  Cement and Super Glue®. But don’t worry.

  They’re almost as good as BOTOX®.

  Dollar a Load

  Some old Greek guys were eating instant chilli from a vending machine

  While doing their laundry at the Laundromat.

  They were discussing a paperback on psychoanalysis.

  Cleobulus: From the perishable standpoint, psychoanalysis supposes

  That the mental representations of the conferrers

  Have a cathexis of definite quantities of low-cal

  Heideggerianism. No, wait. That’s another book I’ve been reading.

  Who has quarters? I only have this five.

  Solon: The machine by the bathroom makes change. Back to the

  Discussion. The purpose of the ballyhoo man is

  To hinder any constipation of these woodwinds

  And to humiliate any tongue-tied monologists to which he

  is subject. Stin iyia sas!

  Chilon: This dryer is dead. I feel sorry for the proprietor.

  Repairs must cut into his profits pretty bad. The path of mental flora

  Is tight-fistedly synchronized by the “pleasure-pain principle”.

  Genetheto phos.

  Cleobulus: I get all these books from my wife because she wants to have

  Something nice to talk about at home. She says, “No old man in his underwear

  Watching the game in the man pit.” The books get all scrambled in my head.

  Bias to Thales: I forgot my socks. I keep them in a net bag. No socks for bowling.

  I have that book you guys are going on about. I got it at fifty percent off.

  I recall it talking about the original pleasure-pain principle getting pureed

  In a food blender with reference to the external world,

  Giving place to the “bow tie”;

  whereby the tongue-tied monologist with suspicious leanings toward

  A neglected form of Heideggerianism learns to project the pleasure of

  Self-inflicted pain. Like a sicko pyramid scheme.

  Thales to Bias: I hope you get to spend some quality time with yourself. Really get to

  Know the man in the man. Know what I’m saying?

  Pitticus: Am I the only guy that is starving? This chilli is flavoured water. The company that

  Sells this stuff is gonna pay someday. It will undermine the young people. It has already.

  Thales: Like really get inside your brain and kick the tires. No, that’s cars. More like,

  Check out the house and see what stinks in the attic. Then tear it all out and make a nice guest

  Bedroom. I did that a few years ago. In the literal sense, I mean.

  Periander: It would be wise to go to that cheap Chinese place for lunch. We can put the laundry in the trunk of my car and I’ll pay. I have these senior coupons for Fridays.

  Need a Million Men

  There’s a hundred dead between us

  That old school and me

  Crazy kids from town

  Knocked the headstones down

  Our clouds come from the refinery

  Sky is like Christ’s glory

  Seldom seen by often felt by the faithful

  Sun is a red poker train crossing light

  And my window is bullet proof glass

  Dress Rehearsal for a Funeral

  Every day I dress the corpse

  Italian suit of silk

  Tie and kerchief

  Cuff links and fine leather shoes

  Drink one scotch

  (Just one now)

  Watch waves conclude inconclusively

  Wait for the sun to clock out

  Ride with the moon in a side car

  To the club changing room

  Keep my pressed pants over the chair back

  Laugh with the radio

  Hit the stage after Death’s knock on the door

  Sing the requisite American Song Book

  Through a Viennese filter

  Sing some undeserved and early hits

  Which were written for a younger voice

  Graciously fold to applause

  Sing the prearranged encore

  Slip into something more comfortable

  Turn the night into a blue pill slumber

  Awaken and bathe and repaint and dress

  That corpse in the mirror

  Who never closes his eyes

  Eh! Voidable Me1

  Wow

  Thierry  Shevchenko

  I mean there are few names like it

  Inscribed upon American Tourister Tiara luggage sets from 1968

  And the man is still around somewhere

  Minus his luggage

  Maybe he still has some lady weave his back hair

  Into an exotic cape

  It’s legendary now

  He could solve mysteries with such epic disdain

  He hated helping people

  Anything that involved removing his scantily clad, hirsute body from his haunt

  At a particular bistro table on Rue St. Denis

  There in Montreal

  The place that had its liquor license revoked six days out of seven

  So he would drink cognac from a hole in a hairdresser’s mannequin head

  It was wrong, wrong, wrong

  But he and Élodie liked it just fine

  He said he learned to remove himself from the troubles of man

  All thanks to Élodie the hairdresser’s mannequin head

  He had learned his disdain for all people and things

  From Élodie the hairdresser’s mannequin head

  Who reminded him of the time they had gone to a second hand store

  To buy a food blender

  And the food blender refused to make any food

  It was a third hand blender

  Originally purchased at Eaton’s in 1988

  Then sold at a Value Village in 1996

  Then finally purchased by Thierry and Élodie

  At Le Coffre Aux Trésors Du Chaînon

  In 1999

  The blender spoke in a disdainful teen girl voice

  That English-speaking undergrads use

  The one that spits out a sentence

  That ends with the final word sound like a squirrel

  Groaning before dyinnnnnnnggggggg

  But not really dying

  More of a casual death

  As in “I had this mocha cappuccino

  And now I’m dyinnnnnnggggggggg.”

  Then they bought a new blender

  Made in Vietnam

  And it operated as a great remote control for the TV

  And would shout “TV kích hoạt!”

  Which their neighbour from Vietnam

  The one who talked into a cell phone while

  Pacing the hallway in his pyjamas

  Stated was a misprint

  But that clearly the blender must have been assembled

  In tandem with another order for remote controls

  And that he could not right now as he was expecting a call

  From his brother in Hanoi

  But then

  Sooner than one can say “Sh-it’s a voiceless palato-alveolar fricative!”

  I climb the stairs up to your detached soul

  You the shrink with the pin-striped suit r />
  The girl gone keeper of mind

  Inside I find

  Pictures of you

  Walking your mum’s Deutsche Dogge

  I eat the experimental medication

  And alternate with a placebo and a flying squid

  I eat imaginary furniture and watch children clap ritualistically

  I try to walk forward backward and sideward

  I sweep a dirt floor with a grass skirt

  You march at night around the 5th floor

  You march at night and recite photographs of every moment

  You have recorded since age six

  When you started to remember to remember

  You ate a cake in Montreal

  A strange old man held your hand

  You left your hand at the wrist in a waste paper basket

  You dried your tears on a burning bus

  You pushed birds into the holes of sinking ship

  You told the giant men what to speak and to whom

  You told trees and sun where to cast shadows

  You told obliging coyotes with hats held to their chest

  To wander back home

  Backward and down into recessed field not growing

  Still cold

  And red

  Like angry skin

  Like fire burning under arctic ice

  You have become the real legend

  The crazy shrink letting her hair down

  Crazy shrink led to the door

  Crazy shrink pushing chair and notebook out the open window

  And hiding under the fainting couch

  I return to your office in the old factory

  Holding a flashlight beneath a basket

  Because you’ve come to hate bright light

  And I whisper remembrances of Thierry  Shevchenko

  And his always wanting to solve the mystery of the 27 Club

  And theorized that all these cats that died at age 27

  Are actually alive at an undisclosed location

  A gated community for seniors in Miami

  They play volley ball while wearing sun shades

  And how I have lost all communication with Thierry

  But then present to you Élodie

  In the hope that you shall become best friends

  As you share so much in common

  On Deathly Snog2

  These being the confessions of a male anglerfish

  (Parasite division)

  And

  Screwball

  Lonelier plotter

  Named Lowly Bob

  Once a free spirit on Marlborough Street in gold lamé suit

  Who has been described as the opinion commonly was

  As being devoid of brain or brawn

  But who as a child of light eschewed all evil

  And became eyes to the blind and feet to the lame

  I was quickly dying of lonesomeness

  Wandering through supermarket trees

  And then determined that it might be better to better oneself

  By plugging into a female of formidable sway

  On a permanent basis

  Namely

  One anglerfish named Robyn Snow, age twenty-two

  Even though doing so

  Would lead to my hasty corporeal decline

  Leaving only the tiniest of gonads

  For burial or derision

  I was adamant in knowing my opportunity

  And so I seized it like a crazed gambler going

  Tête-à-tête with a one-armed bandit

  My ears never recovered from bleeding

  And my nerves never ceased to quake

  My loins were cursed with flaccidity and decay

  Still

  I yearn to receive my supper and television programs

  And encyclopaedias of many kinds

  For free

  One cannot get such tonic and enchantment

  Without cost in these darksome days

  And so I tapped into a lonely wallflower

  All pretty and educated in things clerical

  And found that like me

  She desired erudition and its appurtenances

  On an unvarying basis

  And so I connected myself most permanently

  With that formidable young lady

  The results were immediately startling

  My mind’s eye witnessed peculiar apparitions

  Regarding times distant and future and placed them

  In the here and now

  With a ringing sound and no soothing divider

  All newspaper headlines and manifestoes

  Of the most misfortunate kind

  As might be gleaned from this:

  KIDS WILL DO ANYTHING

  FOR THE BEGINNING OF SORROWS/

  FALL INTO THE FALSE PROPHETS/

  INIQUITY JUST FEELS RIGHT/

  DIAL DOWN THE LOVE OF MANY

  --All thanks to radio waves jarring

  With muddy water

  I found to my dismay

  That I could not press Robyn’s clothes just right

  Or be her constant button man

  Without heated discussions and provocations

  Gushing through holes in our public housing

  To neighbors and landlord and superintendent

  Our unrelenting discord

  On the other fin

  Matrimony is private by definition

  Even when by insolvency or contrition

  It begs for the listener to opine

  Most have the common decency to decline

  And instead

  Resign themselves to glowering

  Over cold beans and bread

  But no one would deny

  That we loved each other

  Like Captain Spaulding and Mrs. Rittenhouse

  While gasping for water in a dead land

  And finding only the sourest of mead

  We naturally refused it

  And yet

  As though by some cruel curse

  Its taste poisoned our dry lips

  And lingered there

  But we would not fight it

  Nor would we dodge the stinging arrows

  Of so many winged putti

  While with restrained fear

  We sought the nearest pier

  From which to jump

  So that we could reacclimatize to our aquatic ways

  These were anxious, harrowing days

  And in the thick grass of it

  We found our Satan-as-serpent

  Toppling ash cans in the alley

  And darting forth on four wheels

  A battered Land Rover

  Narrowly missing me

  Pushing Robyn to the ground

  She with child for six month’s time

  I between regurgitations of favorite books to undergrads

  I got her into a taxi

  The child was not affected

  My wife survived a broken leg and wrist

  And through a twisting of circumstances

  Our romance was rekindled

  Until

  I began to falter and wither

  First my moral resolve

  Then my will to live

  My Id hid its golden reflection from me

  Then snuffed itself into oblivion

  The new child’s birth did little to brighten

  What had become a room of mourning

  And now with Junior gone to raise his own mainsail

  And a wife drenched and moldy in a storm of grief

  I feel a stranger has thieved what might have remained

  Of my crowning glory

  A book of words raw with unrefined energy and life

  Bound stiffly but affably

  Bidding the treasure seeker

  Both entry and adieu

  Pocket Cruiser (Weeping)

  Base and Jar

  Please don’t leave me

  I need something to hold
r />   Tears falling off a roof top

  I need a tarpaulin and a long sword

  To make a sail for a short boat

  I need more tears to make a sea

  To set the boat in for a long journey

  I need a choir of amicable peers

  To sing and to cheer me into high spirits

  Because heaven knows

  That I won’t be coming back

  About the author:

  A reformed Texan, Nathaniel S. Rounds

  Writes from the tallest eyesore east of Montreal.

  This is his heaviest chapbook.