trout

After Arp: 3

Richard von Sturmer

Dinosaurs

It's wrong to compare ourselves with dinosaurs.
Dinosaurs didn't use power tools.
Dinosaurs didn't do jigsaw puzzles.
Dinosaurs never put a man on the moon.
They tore each other to pieces
and fell into tar pits.
It's wrong to compare ourselves with dinosaurs.

André Breton's Inflatable Octopus

André Breton's inflatable Octopus
occupies a portion of Belgium.
On Google Earth you can see the way
it sprawls across Brussels
with one tentacle reaching Antwerp
and another touching Ghent.

André Breton had a penchant
for anal eroticism.
On the other hand
his inflatable octopus
is not only immaculate
but ready, willing and able
to release a magnificent cloud
of perfumed ink.

Circadian Rhythms

Tapping on a toadstool
the sun comes up.

The crickets chirp
as they go to work
their little briefcases
filled with sesame seeds.

Tapping on a capped tooth
the moon goes down.

Slipped into a black folder
then filed away
deep in the archives
with all the other moons.

Our Ancestors

They found a billiard table
embedded
at the centre of an iceberg,
proof that our Neolithic ancestors
engaged in recreational activities.

The skeletons of hairy mammoths
still bear the scars
of their billiard cues.

And look –
over the horizon
kicking up the tundra
a great, enraged herd
of magnetic wildebeest!

Captain Cook's Hat

There's a tree growing
on Captain Cook's hat
two trees in fact,
one on the top
and one on the side.

The erratic navigator
likes to swim
with his dorsal-finned compass

and the blue almond sky

and the blue almond sky.