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Folie a PlusieursFOLIE Á PLUSIEURS; OR, THE PARABLE OF THE MADMEN

The following is a manifesto of my memories, and relevant documents which demonstrate the plight of my city as it tore itself apart; not as a result of social or ethnic divisions, but because of its faith. Let this document be an example to those who read it; that God is dead in the hearts of those who fight for him. In Everingham - “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.”

Matthew Branson,
Mayor of Everingham, Sydney.

ACT I: THE LAND OF TWO MINDS

[ See accompanying graphic here: http://explodingdog.deviantart.com/art/Act-1-134922606 ]

In today’s world,
Our Meaning and PurposeI

All of death is death. Life,
too, is like death.
The way it erupts over you
laughing and spinning.

II

I was confused
so I asked God: What should I do?

Move your body and have emotions. The birds were dancing.

Could you be more specific?

But now God was busy arguing with Moses.

III

All of life is life. Death,
too, is like life.
The way it erupts over you
laughing and spinning.

IV

Tomorrow is the sound
of a question falling
on a bed of questions.

Today I hold out
your name, God,
in the public square.

Yesterday reason, the slayer
of song, wended its way
into our will.

V

All of light is linking. Dreams,
too, would se
earth circuitAnd when the sun sinks, the earth's skin crawls:

I.
I wonder if this awkward creature would notice me the way I notice him.
He's so tragic at his throne
I stare after him longingly.
And yet,
He never realizes that I'm the one
Who forever basks in his brilliant beams.
If only he knew how much brighter he could burn
[with me]
He'd light up the universe.

II.
I heard him speak of thirst, once.
The quenching lust of the stars had run dry.
So that night, I brought along a jar of acid.
(And how it gleamed in his glow).
I handed it to him, wrapped in taffeta ribbons,
screaming
I wish curdling joy
On my gurgling boy

 
to Yellow Plumto Yellow Plum (in blue
china bowl):

      
     afternoon's slit of sun slips
     between thick curtains
     & woos you to ripeness.
    
     it chooses you
     not for flecks of honey-russet
     held low in your seam of shadows,
     nor your symmetry & swell;
     but because
     
     you slink in shade, sink
     behind green pear & clementine

     & cannot hide
     from each spear of light
     that ricochets
     through--

     even now
     nested warm
     against these lips

     even now:
     a tea-stain stone
     hugging close
     the trashbin floor.
Pausing By The WineMarriage is
the frustration of reality

when the man who works the wine section
pauses in his tracks to make sure
you've found everything you "really need...are you sure?"

With a look that tells you
he finds you sort of beautiful

and you wonder how your life
might be different,

if any man other than this one
had ever looked at you like that.
Retraction of ChlorophyllLonger nights,
                 and shorter days,

Sinking towards the horizon,
the sun stretches itself against
pulsating veins – retracting
from margins to petiole
to stems –
           unmasking
                     green
                          
happy hollowLook:
I found him in Happy Hollow, the woods that's on the outskirts of the city. He was a little ways off the path me and my sister, Nahla, take to school, 'cept Nahla was sick that day so it was just me by myself. It's not the fastest way to get to school, but we can't go through Northampton or else the bullies that live there will throw dirt clods at us. After I found him I took him to this old shed out there. It's got a hole in the roof but I figured the little guy'd be safe there on account of it's a good ways away from the Northampton houses; plus you can't hardly see it through all the leaves and branches and stuff. His fur was real
Tallmy words are green tonight
written in the air in a neon glow
standing on the corner in the snow
reciting poetry from memory
i feel very tall

there is power in words
and tonight i'm in control
looming large and strong and
razor sharp
and feeling very tall

have i had too much? no,
just enough to clearly see
my shoulders are straight, my
head held high
speaking green words

and very, very tall
The western nightShove your resplendent sunsets –in these parts, the comedown's fast.
I'm a spoilsport, a real wilful shit –
splashdown on the Pacific's greedy, treacly tongue to curdle everything.
I've come to unpick the stitching of another day you doubtless wasted,
waistcoat pockets lined with tricksy knives for cellblock shivs
and unpremeditated alleyways.
And every kid from fourteen down knows I've got horrors:
wardrobe zombies, anacondas loosed from pet stores, psychopaths.
Seems I'm the first mate of pushers and rapists like it's in my nature,
and yes, it's true – I'm in the barroom and the car park and the lonely road
with han
l'hiver.(you can't tell the birds and the snow apart in the sky:
the grand church of dizzying space - )

and the trees are yellowed in cowardice, raking the sky
to the ground and around and around.

listen to your organs: the almost grand piano of the
churches i'd never attend.

and never mistake the courage of the sky for the cowardice
of the ground. never frown, never frown.

listen to your palms: the salty swing of the old snow
burning up on silk and splendor.

and visit the dying snow birds in their graves of the
ground, and they drown and drown.

(you can't tell the birds and the snow apart in the sky:
a grand church of dizzying space w
The Fat Buddha Smiles At MeThe fat Buddha smiles at me
As I sit in the Vietnamese nail salon,
I wonder if he realizes that
The incense in front of him is electric?

And I, paying money to sit
And have my feet bathed by a lady,
Am bowed to far more often, with
Sacrificial poses, and softly spoken words.

I wonder what it must be like
To be so enlightened that
I could be satisfied with plastic.
While the lady asks if I prefer
The blue or purple polish?
Street Corner DrowningI drowned her in her own regrets and moved her off my street corner. She didn't belong there, like that little turquoise car Matty once bought used.  Yeah, it ran great and had power windows.  But, it didn't fit. It was an eyesore on the curbed canvas of our street's patina.

That's what she was: an eyesore.  She never wore her feelings on her sleeve because they restricted her range of motion, she said.  And I wondered what she thought she wouldn't need stiff elbows for on this block.

When the dawn would break in such a fashion that light actually streamed, she should have glittered with the fine sheen of mistakes she'd made. But she was mu
It starts with a flash-bang and a Majulahi.
June's hauled her here again and
she's tapping at my classroom window,
A gazillion tiny fingers rapping in succession
(When she said "invitation" I didn't realise she meant
soaking half the country, the spike in umbrella prices has
nothing to do with me)
What's worse than an impatient child
is one with the whole atmosphere as her battering ram
when she tries to say something the urgency brims over
and one million exclamation marks
is beginning to sound like static frazzling
out on the pavements

ii.
She is without choice: when Cloud mother tips her out
she must go, and go she will
caught in an obtuse cycle, fought over
March the Secondmy sweet little cyclone
ripping through the valley
hey, hey
what have you got for me today?

you've got fire in your fingers
it's whipping through my hair
i'm dancing in your tears
under a thundering stare
hey, hey
what have you got for me today?

and i'm sure destruction lays before
a wilted path, i'm headed for
i see the calm before your storm
tell Talula I can't wait no more
Single LadiesI want to spend a summer fortnight in the Everglades with LynnMarie.
I want to sleep all day and stay up all night, learning just one dance.
I want to dance like Kurt Hummel in the Glee "Single Ladies" video.
I want to learn every hair flip, finger waggle, hip thrust, every move.

I want to keep this incredible talent a tiny secret in my heart of hearts.
I want to keep it for a day when I have a true heart great-granddaughter.
I want to see the gleam in her eye when I invite her to share my secret.
I want to dance, dance for her, until we both cry gasping tears of laughter.
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More from ~Roulle

many monumentswe are driving over wet grass and over a cliff, vrooming, blue toes,
a cold that extends forever. Congratulations! our fluids yell in a fizzing loop.

the past is folded neatly in the backseat, along with my bra and
puke the color of gangrene, and piles of whiskey,
dead skin that has flaked over too many fingers
and built a shadow of you on me.

your space ghost belching cigarette smoke
and fucking dead moons into me like a gunshot--

let me build a drunken castle in the dark inside my body,
to fill with that bust of Paolo and Francesca
which you passed me with your tongue.
fluid mechanicsThere is water streaming outside and inside
   outside through clouds of porous cheesecloth
inside pipes in the building flat like unleavened bread
inside    plumbing that is big   they flood my body.
breach my heart moving against me
a traitor wielding a flag of red sinew.
and the eyes leak their crumbling tears of brick
my garden is well tended lush and green
it is watered by clouds leaking their rain,
weeping and clandestine, it plants itself in my body
of which my hands are storm clouds, veins the blue, wet plumbing.
      or sometimes my body is an
Storm SeerSeptember must frighten rabbits--
the quick god who takes a quick drink and makes the earth leap and swell.
When the sky clenches its teeth,
the bushes shudder and run.

Night prematurely born is strangely purple,
the color of poison flowers, of forgetting.
It steps over the moon with a growl.
The trees shudder and sway.

Night is a man that enters quietly into your house,
the storm is not quiet but beats with its erratic heart upon the door,
and its lightning fists clutch summer,
its sobs are gulped by the ground of lie silent in stagnant pools,
shuddering.

Slugs and worms rise from the earth like grief,
wade upon small seas and
Muir Woods National MonumentI held my breath along the winding path.
I do not like rides that side-wind.
Listening to bad music makes me ill.
I was glad when we lost radio reception.

Driving to the woods was quiet.
Farms protruded from cuts made in the mountains
by valleys and years of sunlight-- a secret,
a surprise.

$5 per visitor, per visit.

The first trail was a mistake--
My sneakers slipped in the mud of ground
that had been recently rained on, so we turned back,
passed a dog and two park rangers who didn't mind
that dogs weren't allowed there.

I heard yips that sounded like smiles.

Coyotes are like dogs, too.

Then we were enveloped in the arms of t
space between us pt 1You called me the denizen of a black room, the only one awake at this hour, tenant of a dark, inescapable night. I was transformed by the moon, to howling, to loneliness and two-beer bedtimes after writing about this smouldering hour. This sound, the long forgotten rhythmic hammer of my blood, I will write all day tomorrow and at night I will buy Sleep a drink.

I read your poem today for the first time, and though I was inspired by your march of sorrow, it did not make me weep; for sorrow is an old wound. All that drifts down to us are the memories of New York evenings, seeing how many people we can forget, drunk in a bathtub, or lose over t

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Grapefruit

:iconroulle:

I hold a microcosm in this globe,
heavy on the palm of my hand,
full of regret and heat.

it is heft and heady smell,
the unexpected roundness discovered on the ground
after the season's first rain, a secret shielded
by shining leaves pulled open like wet, wide eyes.

The skin blushes with nervous goose-flesh,
fragrant as a summer promise.
It is the dark light behind your iris,
lemonade on the green porch,
hair stripped by the sun until it is soft and wild.

It holds the flesh of the hot season
tightly beneath its puckered skin
and I knock on the door of its fullness
with my teeth.

We are sharing this summer secret together,
in the gray plant nursery
where the mud sucks your shoes from your feet.

A stooped tree glances at us from the spot
where it burst through a fence,
speckled with moss.
:iconroulle:
visiting a nursery on a wet day.
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Daily Deviation

Given 2012-06-02
Grapefruit by ~Roulle ( Featured by ^Beccalicious )
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:icondoodelay:
~Doodelay Jan 3, 2013  Student Writer
Unbelievable poetry.

Unbelievable.

I was just browsing through my favorites today and came across this and nearly fell out of my seat after a reread.

Man this is brilliance at its finest. I could learn a lot from this, thanks
Reply
:icondaimondstar07:
*DaimondStar07 Jun 2, 2012  Hobbyist Writer
When life gave me Grapefruit, I made myself Grapefruit Juice. And now, I never go a single day without a glass.
Reply
:iconroxeeade:
~Roxeeade Jun 2, 2012  Student General Artist
This is such a beutiful poem (or nursery), it reminds me of when me and my friend would sit by a tree and eat our strawberries <3 although, this is a grapefruit. Depended on how someone's childhood is like, this can rouse up emotions and mix in your own feelings toward something--good or bad--to add with the senses that this poem (I call it poem, though I think the correct term would be nursery) that it appeals. Great work.
Reply
:icondoodelay:
~Doodelay Jun 2, 2012  Student Writer
every word seems so plump :]
Reply
:iconpseudometry:
~pseudometry Jun 2, 2012   Writer
This is a real delight to the senses.
Reply
:iconhmrg:
~HMRG Jun 2, 2012
Wonderful. The subject matter and vivid imagery reminds me of the style of Theodore Roethke.

Poetry is an economic use of language-- expressing much with very few words-- and you have done just that. I'm glad this made the DD. You deserve it. Very well done.
Reply
:iconrunty:
~runty Jun 2, 2012  Student General Artist
how beautiful :heart:
you captured every essence a grapefruit can have- how it looks, smells and feels on the inside and out!

Nurseries inspire me very similarly :heart:
Gorgeous poem!
Reply
:icongummyrabbit:
~gummyrabbit Jun 2, 2012  Student Writer
Heavens, this is wonderful! The atmosphere is intoxicatingly lovely.
Reply
:iconimaginary-whispers:
Mood: Love ~Imaginary-Whispers Jun 2, 2012  Student Writer
I adore this piece of literature very much
Reply
:iconospreyghost13:
~Ospreyghost13 Jun 2, 2012  Student Digital Artist
This piece brings so many summer memories for me. :) Lovely work.
Reply
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