Popeye v. Plato
Moments undulate,
currying avian foliage, seeping poultry embers into voices of the trampled
queue, angling formal orderlies for bedpan shoes, sputtering lusty pallor,
closing dormant scarlet hampers, timing hamlet egress, shopping infernal laser
chimps for glowing capers, disinfecting snails, placating umpteen archers,
popping endothermic date machines on next door brainers, sleeping sightless loin
cigars beyond contaminated glue farms, spinning wharf wool from nectarines,
plying follicle tirades in stymied cubes, itching estuaries, coming merely
chaste to crossbow slams, mooching noodles, pushing lush beagles off ottoman
arrestors, creasing false eateries in pasty estrogen loops, flushing one-way
mirror lookout pleas, bagging bugged stoppers beforehand, plunging neck-deep
into cesspool semantics, chafing horded mortal empties, screeching a mulish
stevedore’s futile embrace, causing segues to chortle at beaned gawkers, lusting
every udder’s cash-n-carrion bromine neurosis, coughing down phlegmatic droop,
nixing noxious pennant flavors, leaving wardroom spirals half pleasant, scabbing
over tonsure fuse measles, watching childhood hemlines flee to sundry chided
pates, hoping floral petticoats endure salubrious penance, gushing under passed
auctions, plotting riddance toes, seeming to sharpen lonely seals, hocking up
crescent mornings, marching alluvial effluvia to crooked linotype pews,
embracing humped solitude, clamoring for malodorous hidebound pucks, stating
oblivious insignias in coarse moat flotillas, arming painful spawn with messy
tomography, pumping paltry antlers from dearly bedraggled cauterizers,
blathering untoward parkas at baleen waddlers, forming up for imbecilic toadies,
scooting down silvered sideburns, tossing back insulting plain molasses,
catching onto choice drubbings, bumbling leeward, stacking consolations, pulsing
without heaven noticing, noticing mass slippage, stapling knotty splines to
pineal goulash, fleeing countryside flu, farming for sealing stipends, dozing
off salacious thigh-bone chimneys, diving into anthill soup, carving dirty mares
from sodden dowsers, surging below ducks with trenchant corpsmen, mining for
coffers of hasty boffins, lighting up brooms of hazy fees, sweeping omens off to
fleeting heat, bumping ashcans, fossilizing before urine sighs, umpiring abject
ingots of time, savoring recessed spaniels, bottling oxen for splintered
porridge, cruising salivation’s easy runes for deadpan gorilla meals, clashing
with thermal tigers in Death Valley crusades, jostling beneath effusive weeds,
forking offensive neutered republics, scribbling alarming fetal mores, throbbing
when noon looks awry, riding pensive lifers to rattled doe meadows, casting
Asperger’s palindromic starch on stuttered seas, plucking lackadaisical gumption
for hot spartan ghouls, meshing with closeted rolling pins, blowing off Popeye
for alpha smocks, castling two hundred times pi, edging through paltry
ossification, posing for statutory geese, sticking caissons where hostels blow,
postulating undefined deference, referring to Plato, musing on botulism’s
opposite facts, pickling wandering shambles in sod…
John Pursch lives in Tucson, Arizona. His
work has appeared in many literary journals and was recently nominated for the
Sundress Best of the Net 2012 Anthology. His first book, Intunesia, is available
in paperback from White Sky Books at http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/whiteskybooks . He's
@johnpursch on Twitter and john.pursch on Facebook.
Cartoon icon Popeye and Greek-Geek philosopher Plato have something very important in common. Hence, we have this penetrating poem by John Pursch. What they have in common is “Spinach” - (Greek: σπανάκι).
ReplyDeletePlato wrote of his mentor in the “Apology” (which describes the trial of Socrates) that his mentor chose to drink hemlock when he realized he had corrupted Athenian youth from eating a “balanced diet.” Moreover, Spinach was not approved by the STATE as part of the-State-Diet-Plan.©
Earlier Socrates had spoken these immortal words: “The unexamined life is not worth living without spinach.”
Today, we are free to say and eat “spinach.” Thanks to the poetry of John Pursch, we are encouraged to be free to say, write, and act-out the following: “mooching noodles” and “coughing down phlegmatic droop,” and many other interesting and unpredictable and disgusting things.
Thanks John for helping to free us from the tyranny of a language and behavior imposed upon us by the STATE!