Richard von Sturmer
After Arp
Mushrooms
The flat, black mushrooms
grow luxurious green hair.
Green hair edged
with a band of white.
Green hair as luminous
as underwater plants.
Green hair that can be fashioned
into horsehair whisks.
The flat, black mushrooms
exhale clusters of stars.
They live in a section of the forest
where no flies can settle.
*
The Great Slug
The great slug rides his bicycle.
His baggy pants can barely contain
his baggy pants.
He leaves behind
a trail of gray foam.
The great slug is a connoisseur
of sofas and lazy boy recliners.
He merely rides his bicycle
to rid himself
of certain metallic parasites
which inhabit the deeper recesses
of his sagging flesh.
If only the great slug
were a hermaphrodite.
But his penis
remains firmly fixed
in the centre of his forehead.
The slug and I have a long history
of altercations.
He’s nothing but an impostor,
a provocateur,
a guzzler of kerosene.
Someday we’ll settle old scores.
Someday we’ll slug it out.
*
The Lozenge Box
fire of flamingos
smoke of bats
ash of ants
On one bleak
mid-winter’s day
you offered me
the key to the lozenge box
and ever since then
multicoloured pastilles
continue to tumble out.
a flywheel
a watering can
Fidel Castro’s
fountain pen
Multicoloured pastilles
continue to tumble out.
*
The Empress of Emptiness
What a belle,
what an absolute
fashion plate.
The Empress of Emptiness
puts on her tinsel crown
while the black bluejays
attack her battlements
with toothpicks
and tape recorders.
Serious tinnitus is sweeping through
Tintagel Castle
and Titus has gone to ground.
The Empress of Emptiness
gathers together her long dress
and disappears
down the elastic corridor.
*
My Uncle
My uncle
the acquirer of spoons
blind as a bat
skimming over the Astroturf.
Old polaroids
lie scattered like tiles
in his abandoned garden.
For a joke he once placed
a small, cloth sailor
inside a condom.
My uncle
who would break into a sweat
at the sight of a dead matchstick.
He loved the air
the letter H
the sound of castanets.
My uncle
who hypnotized
the King of Thailand
When I open the door
to his garden shed
sparrows fly out
from the rusted hinges.
*
Elephants
Elephants are never
irrelevant.
They use adjectives
to extract
honey from honeycombs.
*
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.
