MEDITATIONS ON BLUE, YELLOW AND GREY by Nathaniel S. Rounds



  MEDITATIONS ON BLUE, YELLOW AND GREY

  NATHANIEL S. ROUNDS

  Fowlpox Press

  ©MMXII Nathaniel S. Rounds

  All Rights Reserved

  ISBN: 978-0-9879561-4-9

  Contents:

  I don’t divulge this stuff to conspiracy theorists and chin waggers and such. But we’ve invested all our profits into plastics. Every single penny. Plastics. So there’s your story.

  Burning Bus(h)

  There’s no sound of sirens

  And that’s a problem.

  Some girl with a head wound

  and Ugg boots

  Is drinking a placenta mocha latte

  While talking in a staccato style

  In an affected, sing-song,

  Mezzo-soprano rise- and -fall about Pablo Neruda.

  There’s an overwhelming smell of burning flesh

  Pulsing out from the street

  To which she seems impervious.

 

  But the problem becomes apparent

  When we see she is speaking to a flaming bus

  Which she includes in her imaginary clique of well-heeled friends.

  Bus passengers try frantically to get out.

  When we pull back we can see that her convertible Saab

  Is all-but-demolished.

 

  A man smashes his way through the front door of the bus

  And leads ten people with multiple flesh wounds

  And third degree burns

  Outside and way from an impending explosion.

  The girl wrinkles her nose and says “Ewwwww!

  Let me check my purse for some wipes.

  You look gross!”

  Everywhere in Chains

  I do not wish to sing for you

  I don’t need carnations that fade from view in the cold, grating air

  I do not wish to dance for you

  While you dangle compliments

  Like treats in front of hungry dogs

  I will not humour you

  Or meet your greedy gaze

  Have my use to you weighed on crooked scales

  I will not be that expendable man

  Decorated like a cheap cake

  For a shotgun, midweek wedding

  And my exit will cover you like a temple curtain

  Torn in two

  Daddy-O

  The sea pig was loudly sipping slurping and sucking bottled water with a straw until there was nothing but air in the green glass bottle and he sucked that too until a fellow patron and psycho-biddy paid a waiter to bring him another bottle of water to keep him quiet as the sax man on stage was getting heavy with song and labouring over squeals that wanted to become definable notes but something was wrong there was a wall that had to be broken and so the sea pig at the front table sucked down some more water and the psycho-biddy held money out to the docile waiter who produced another green glass bottle of water complete with straw and the sax man bent his knees and squealed some more until his horn blew fourteen hundred different notes that spun like baby replicas of the sax itself, fourteen hundred visible and audible sons and daughters of this brass seahorse manipulated by anxious hands and mind variously applauded and recognized by seated spectators made ready by wine and water

  615 Words to Go (Before You Get The Picture)

  When I was young and foolish

  I worked as Chief Photographer

  For an award-winning studio.

  In the course of the day,

  While immortalizing high school graduates,

  Rich fiancés, expectant mothers

  And undertakers,

  I would take a moment to dust, sweep and

  Mop the studio from front glass window

  To the rear bathroom.

  I felt that this cleaning business was part of

  Eliminating the unnecessary.

  But I was young and foolish then,

  And neglected to take out the owner with the trash.

  He was old, rich and hateful.

  He was the one who would boast:

  “I can sell clothes to a nudist,

  Constant craving to a Buddhist, and

  Go to Jail cards to bail bondsmen.”

  He had me selling eighty cent 8x10 portraits

  For forty dollars. Just because they bore his name,

  Even though I had shot them.

  When I set up my own studio to set up in accord

  With my ethics, he came walking in with a contract I

  Had signed, and pointed to something I hadn’t read carefully:

  Something called a non-compete. I couldn’t shoot in a fifty mile

  Radius of his studio for the next five years.

  So I took up work as a realtor,

  And in four years’ time bought the three buildings closest to his studio.

  I sold one to a nudist cafe, a second to a Zen meditation group, and a third to

  A bail-bond agent. In the fifth year after I had left this

  Award-winning portrait studio, many parents forbade their children

  To walk near the nudist café, even though they had a high fence.

  The monks who ran the Zen meditation center would sit peacefully in their long

  Garb with their shaved heads in the studio waiting room, causing the

  Vanilla-middle-class clients to flee the scene.

  The sudden loss of income came at a time when the studio owner’s debt

  Was through-the roof. Finally, the unscrupulous bail-bond agent

  Sold the studio owner a bond following his arrest for stealing money

  From purses left in the changing room.

  When the studio owner couldn’t pay an additional fee, he was led back to jail.

  When his studio and equipment went up for tax sale,

  I bought it and liquidated the estate,

  Then opened up a restaurant: The name: 385 Words.