I may have complained publicly about so-called surrealist poetry that consists largely of strings of words that together mean nothing. The following, imperfect though it may be, gets at what i would like surrealist poetry to be. So, maybe it's just a different brand of poetry entirely and I'm arguing semantics.
Impromptu
at a lectureDo we need a synthesis? Sometimes
my ears cannot hear
words and must hear past
words. Then you
wonder which way.
Too much, too often,
and speaking up, the small man said,
"Black please," but they spilled
the milk. And served it
black anayway. It was swept away on the
shoestring of an
old woman's sneakers
as she was shopping through
bin after bin for bargain shoes.
The salesman thought it best to pass
on the bootblack, the season being warm
and the weather turning wet.
Don't you wander where you're going
sometimes, she said, he said, but they doubted both,
and listened to the minister himself.
Where do you find remainders after division has healed
the multiplication of ills? Not as easily
the blacksmith would reply were
he not a
ferrier.© 2002 Steven Riddle
To paraphrase Eugene Ionesco, from one of the most amusing plays I have read--"Have a lovely cartesian quarter of an hour with it."
Later in the same play, a conversation overheard,
"What about the Bald Soprano?" (La Cantatrice Chauve)
"I love the way she does her hair."
