It’s a High Voltage Adventure Read online



  It’s a High Voltage Adventure

  Nathaniel S. Rounds

  Fowlpox Press

  ©MMXII Nathaniel S. Rounds

  All Rights Reserved

  ISBN: 978-0-9879561-3-2

  Contents:

  Can I level with you? Like the bread you buy these days, this is mostly air.

  Red-Handed Dial Bliss

  Hit banal, inebriant truth

  With the story of a downhearted pop

  And his grown boy

  Old people still talk about them

  The fatherless, motherless aurochs

  Chuck Steak Durabrand

  Who came out of Nowhere

  And disappeared down a crack in the sidewalk

  And his adopted pig

  Blind Ludwig Howdybrant

    

  Chuck Steak is sitting in his skivvies

  Scrutinizing television

  And coaxing a beer

  Sofa and floor boards bowing beneath him

  And he recounts while he takes in the Leafs score

  How he was pushing hard this old ambulance

  Up a steep hill and his tires gave out

  All eight horses gave out

  And his spirits gave out

  He had been a fast driver

  Saved countless people from death

  Including one kid who had slashed his wrists

  Horizontally

  Chuck Steak wanted to say

  “If you want to do it right,

  Cut this way,”

  Showing vertically

  “Not like that”

  But calmness of the tongue

  Is the Tree of Life

  So he bound up the kid’s wounds

  And took him to emergency

  And the kid mended his ways

  And sold radio ad time in Toronto

  Until his early retirement

  But after the burnout on the hill

  Chuck Steak was shaken for good

  He drove taxi to make ends meet

  That’s how Blind Ludwig the pig

  Came to live with him

  He was left in a blanket in the backseat

  With a note that read

  “My husband died of thorium poisoning

  In a lab explosion. After settling our affairs

  I have no money to look after Ludwig,

  So please take care of him,”

  Which Chuck Steak did for eighteen years

  No complaints

  He had always been skeptical of his own parenthood

  So it just seemed the right thing to do

  He kept the taxi top light in a steamer trunk

  With a Bible and some pictures

  But he kept no secrets

  His sins gibbeted in full view of neighbors

  There above the laundry lines and chalk-marked sidewalks

  He drew his lost loves and regrets in the air

  With a broken hoof

  Dreamt of green fields

  And streams in spring time

  And no enslavement to CB radios or taximeters

  And time to get it right

  With this father thing

  And making peace

  With peace

  Home Amongst the Ruins

  I tried to build a building from the sky down

  Didn’t get the roof top level

  That’s why the stone foundation

  Floats over the dugout cellar on the east side

  Crows took to sliding off the slanted roof line

  Wild boars wandered into the cellar

  And settled in

  Seems a sin to ask them to leave

  It’s like they were meant to always be

  Below the frost line

  And I now have affection for

  Their adaptation as endorsement

  Maddening, Large Arsonist

  There goes Pink Al on a pale horse

  That febrile poet

  The largest of the lesser apes

  His horse dances forward

  Then backward on chair leg stilts

  Pink Al rewords in finger-cymbal sing-song

  Seneca’s Apocolocyntosis divi Claudii

  Reeking of marigolds and tangerines

  Then he writes rabbinical babble on bottles of soap

  Decrying the plasticization of both cobbler and cook

  After their journey to the Kingdom of Kush

  In search of a whale shark refugee camp

  Stuck aboard a jollyboat

  Rife with factionalism and bad sushi

  This old heel and the good soul, says Pink Al

  Were so very far from Sanssouci

  And he meanders into their alchemic fate

  As cadavers circling a water wheel

  Pulling up wisdom from a deep well

  Pink Al then takes a non sequitur by the collar down a long

  Dark alley and shakes him down for some change

  Moments later

  He exits the alley

  Agitated and alone

  His solitary prize:

  A one hundred dollar bill and a signed declaration of stagnation

  So he and his horse board a crosstown bus

  Now they’re off to ask Gambrinus

  For a pot of ale and safety

  Fake References (Keen Farce Frees)

  When Devorah Vasconcelos

  Came from apartment 2204

  To babysit my Chihuahuas

  I was initially grateful

  Until

  Following the concert and dinner with my wife

  I received a full report from my eldest dog

  Detailing how Devorah

  Drank all my beer (which I substantiated)

  And dressed herself in my chicken costume

  (It

  Was in a locked security box

  So how did she…)

  Devorah lined up all three Chihuahuas

  In the kitchen

  (ages 1-3)

  And told them a tale about her near-murder

  Of a college roommate

  And how they would need to be careful

  So as not to distress her

  And then she made them watch Midnight Express

  And now my three-year-old Chihuahua

  Wakes up barking Billy Hayes

  Billy Hayes

  Staring into middle distance

  And biting his kennel door

  Like prison bars

  Pull

  One arm grappled around that summer house that sits on the crag over New England foam

  While the other brushed away that gull

  And my eyes told the chatty Kathy from Rhode Island to shut up shut up shut it and bury it

  And then I tried to pull you closer to me

  As we rode on that bus-as-trolley so popular in Ogunquit and York

  Words failed me

  I see you as a wild doe might

  Or as a nocturnal feeder

  I can’t deal direct

  Ly

  With you nor can I

  Build a bridge

  And let you cross it with confidence

  We walk along the Marginal Way

  I fear asking questions that dig too deep

  Even in this sea rose vista

  Then

  Hours later at the Fun-O-Rama

  We smash our way through pinball games

  Until they are matchsticks and fragments of numbers

  Perhaps we’ll count the time together

  Against the score we forgot to hold on to

  Paysage

  The bachelor apartment on South Park Street

  Has this thi
rty-year-old poster reproduction

  Of a Rouault landscape

  That looks like a Ryder

  But it is not—there are too many greens for Ryder

 

  And look at that bold yellow

  Maybe it’s too abstract even for that eccentric fart

  But I can see the two discussing it

  Man to man

  With a certain camaraderie

  Like a preconceived conversation

  For a 1940s newsreel

  The cracks in the painting

  Seem to have been contributed by Ryder

  The

  Sketch-like quality seems to belong to Rembrandt

  With that bold afterthought of the man

  When the Dutch genius made field sketches

  A sketch blurts descriptions of the opening scene

  Like a sharp blast of European

  Jazz reinterpreted as a theatrical backdrop

  As visualized by Chinese followers of Basho

  And neither the indifferent reproduction

  Or the sun’s rays on old ink

  Can diminish the immediacy

  Of this entombed land

  Like A Red Morn

  That shameless little guy, she mused

  That smooth-talking King Cottonmouth

  He needs to be reminded of his glass house

  Get ushered inside

  Bolted inside

  In this room of orphaned china bisque dolls and pyrite

  Tar-scented ship rigging and sail

  The wooden ladder positioned under the cross beam

  Succumbed to a broken leg and step

  Declaring its weaknesses by imposing them upon an

  Unsuspecting girl of twenty-six with broom in one hand

  Her head stopped by slab stone while King Cottonmouth

  Descended a jack post

  To examine

  Her flailing hands rebuked by rusty saw blades while

  She waded through rising rivulets of red

  And now we’ve no word regarding the early life

  Winterberry wife cake

  Zoha Diakonos

  Although it is widely understood that she

  Did not kick up the dust on the floor

  She relinquished not an inch of precious time

  For her pocket-sized feet to reach it

  And in the morning light

  She whipped the warehouse on the wharf

  Into presentable-to-the-public-shape

  To a new jack swing

  There in her page-boy black hair

  Black tee and shorts

  And

  M- 1965 field jacket

  She had a broom-as-mallet

  And an incendiary comportment

  You could feel razing the streets with the cop cars blocking us

  From passage

  She was a heat that scared Atlantic gentle winds

  And motorcycle bar draught beer/mesquite/ white bread and gravy jabber

  This

  Only child of a man born near the Cave of the Apocalypse

  And his wife

  (A correspondent cum copy editor from Mumbai)

  Sweeping out uncertainty and pained condescension

  Leaving no place for dust balls or devils

  With her eagle’s watch

  Who dared creep amongst this sleeping pile of porcelain

  Palms and knees and clothed loins in this many-sided sickbay

  Born in the Hôtel Nelligan

  Art is not a handicraft you leave in the alley there on Beach Street in Daytona

  Art is not something you abort because it counters your programme

  Zoha was ART all in uppercase letters

  ART had to bleed through all the disparate currents and somehow find a home

  She had her long tresses and objections cut with shears by an obliging carpenter

  And she worked against the superfine and the self-exalted without the smallest of

  Provocations or dog bites

  The high tessitura of her role ruined her voice

  But the angels still listened with persistent devotion

  She gave birth to a man

  An out-and-out he-man in snake skin booties

  She ejected him from her long, navy kit bag-shaped womb

  Which she had often pointed like a finger at King Cottonmouth

  I.e., “I want YOU to act like a provider, spade head”

  But somehow accepted that she would be busy fighting and feeding

  Like a hawk everlastingly

  While getting crushed and melted down into

  A fly’s breath falling through a passing shadow

  She was that muse in the closet to

  That bookish poet with the tongue of silk

  Who painted her with words

  Which variously praised and damned her

  As either Queen Esther or Jezebel

  And now

  In this red sea fashioned from ill ladder and serpent

  Made her downfall red amongst the heartwood within

  And the palms and evergreens without

  While her offspring in cobwebbed pram

  Cut through darkness with beaming eyes

  While King Cottonmouth minded his own head

  Pirate Talk

  Rómulo Delgado Raúl Humberto Soto

  The paradoxical frog

  Had jumped off the Venezuelan tall ship

  Simón Bolívar onto a Halifax dock

  And through a series of mishaps and mishops

  Found himself fighting sleep

  While attempting a fluent conversation with a harbour seal

  Who had thought it might be nice to bask in the sunshine

  On the Shore of Point Pleasant Park

  The seal made a few comments in Spanish

  Quoting Rafael Cadenas

  Then launched into a disquieting story in his customary sailor talk

  Which was softened somewhat by his easy smile

  Complete with thick tongue and saucer-sized eyes:

  While me mate Maurice were walkin' 'is tart hammer and tack home 

  I flushed me trophy winnin' arse berries dahn the john 

  And tried ter break the bloody neck of that 

  Flat-toned tin-eared clammy-fisted Laodicean 'oo spieled dinner speeches 

  At a table runnin' riot wiv marmoset monkeys dressed as buccaneers 

  Breafink discontent 

  (This 

  Were not a singular event) 

  And then I 'ad a most delightful Bowler Hat wif a Charles Fox in the bloody Johnnie Horner of the Bleedin' washroom and I 'ad kept me Hackney Marsh mince pie upon it and me Robin Hood Mince pie upon it and could tell from its dimensions that it was a most comely cardboard Charles Fox and I said ter it: Are ya not familiar ter me? Did I not spy ya in New York’s Central Noah's Ark away hammer and tack in 1987? Were ya not then a resplendent oak tree and Pope In Rome ter a fousan red squirrels?

  And I were at its feet sprorled out much like I'm now. And its recourse were as follows: 

  “If yer plan ter spread out as yer do now and ter stay that way, know that I 'ave a mucker in an Axe man 'oo will gladly cut yer frough and turn yer into an 'earff rug. So kindly leave me be and Make yorself scarce, yer froffy seal, right, yer. “

  And so I spot frogs and kings and and the quiet and the bloody loud all go pass me by, and I Smile like a child and wish yer well. Anyfink yer wish ter say before yer wish me leave?

  To which Rómulo Delgado Raúl Humberto Soto

  The paradoxical frog replied:

  “El velero lustroso de la muerte 

  Pasea tu silencio por mis mares sombríos….”

  -- Esto de mi amigo, Vicente Gerbasi

  You There

  Laugh lines and signs of failing liver

  Wrinkles and knobby belly

  They say one thing:

  The child has turned old

/>   The child has turned into a crooked man

  And he crumples up like a dry leaf

  On the dance floor

  Ask the janitor for a shovel

  Scoop up that dry corpse from the dance floor

  Do it quickly

  Do it fast

  Let the music last

  And last