MEDITATIONS ON BLUE, YELLOW AND GREY by Nathaniel S. Rounds

by Fowlpox Press

Mr. Pinky

  The windup clock had not been on the bus stop seat moments ago, but there it was, rattling its two-bell alarm like so much clucking in the early rain. He didn’t dare touch it, as it belonged to some person not yet visible inside or outside the Plexiglass shelter through which he stared in expectation of Bus 52. “Infidel” said a voice. He jumped at the sudden sound. He could see that the alarm clock had been replaced by a short man in denim coveralls and a plaid shirt. It wasn’t his pork pie hat that made the costume absurd as what must have been size 12 shoes in ruby red which completed it. “Sorry to startle you, little chick,” said the man. “I’m Larry. Couldn’t help myself.” The rain had made a little pond on the floor of the shelter and sent a little leaf spiraling around like a lost boat. “I have diverticulitis,” said Larry. “Little pockets in the colon that go all painful, like hot pizza or snake bites.” Larry offered a hand. “What’s your name?” He hesitated to respond, more out of city conditioning than anything else. Then he reluctantly produced his name. “I’m Mr. Pinky,” he said. “I’m a stand-up tragedian. I get fifty bucks for five minutes. Tell people the most depressing things—about being stashed in a dumpster at six months of age, or about vivisection. People like to cry their eyes out. When I’m off stage, I like to wear these feathers, because I self-identify as a chicken.” Larry looked Mr. Pinky over. “Polyester feathers can give you the hives,” he whispered. “You should go to a chicken farm, get some feathers there, and wash them in sodium borate. Stick them to a union suit.”Mr. Pinky shook his head. “I’m allergic,” he sighed. “Poly is all I’ve got.” Larry nodded gravely, and then brightened at the sight of the spinning leaf. He knelt down to pick it up. “Maple,” he said triumphantly. “I like a good maple tree, don’t you?” But Mr. Pinky was not there to respond. He had seen the Bus 52 in the near distance, and had braced the heavy rain to board it—just in time to look back and see a maple grandfather clock chiming at the bus shelter door.

  Night Soil

  I am a night soil man

  In the night I haul off your excrement

  Along with your sordid thoughts and vanity

  I take it to the countryside

  And use it to fertilize cabbages for your corned beef

  And when you eat the lovely cabbages

  You get roundworms by the hundreds

  Which choke you

  And make parts of your mind, heart and soul

  Gangrenous

  I get two shillings for every ton of your night soil

  And sleep while you wither

  Under the sun

  Stock-Still in 3D

  The glowing harpy

  Takes a spent product benign in origin and transforms it into a middling object inferior to its new purpose

  Meanwhile, our collective of fat bottoms further deflates a razed earth

  We rescue the air to further inflate our undersides

  So that should a typhoon occur

  We shall be able to float to safety

  If we don’t sink first

  And there on Marginal Road

  By Gate 26 on the water

  The aging Pomeranian sits at his master’s desk

  In the square mill building standing on tall legs by rust-stained silos

  And attached to said silos by means of long chutes and ducts that serve

  As weather-proof tunnels for rats of all sorts

  Is an office

  Where the Pomeranian serves as temp supervisor

  Over a canary-gone-cuckoo in her bamboo cage

  And that brick-built cat of course hair

  And in vinyl blind- filtered-sunlit midair

  Through dust enumerated but not registered

  This mutt’s heart revolves on its axis

  Around his brain

  And as it does its sleepless walk

  It is acknowledged by this brain

  While the other side of the heart

  Remains in shadow

  The cat eyes the bird

  As she titters:

  “What do you think I should do?”

  “What do you think I should do?”

  “What do you think I should do?”

  And the cat makes hissing sounds

  And paws the stand

  That holds the bamboo cage

  And the dog growls in such a way

  To say: “Bark incoming—and you won’t like it!”

  And his heart turns cold toward his charges

  And then

  After what seems to be a season or so

  He warms up to them

  Only to hate them again

  But then in the coldest of winters

  There is that unexpected thaw

  And wouldn’t his master

  Absent following closure of the factory

  Have been proud of his overcoming personal emotions

  For the betterment of all

  Rationing his own biscuits and seeking out seed

  Opening the window to seek water caught

  In the window box

  And through neglected sunflowers one might see

  Enlarged cracks in the pavement below

  Through which

  Weeds and trees grow

  And through the wind-beaten steel gate

  Roads that lead to concrete road blocks

  Obstructing holes that plunge

  Into salty water

  Water baptizes

  Salt preserves

  But forgotten jackets and newspapers

  Keep winter away from the living

  And this mutt’s heart warms up

  What the brain forgot

  And the brain reminds one

  Of what the heart has turned from

  And the two seek intercourse

  Over living while waiting

  And

  While industry turns into history

  Nathaniel S. Rounds writes from an illuminated box

  using a carpenter’s pencil. When he has filled the inside

  walls of the box with words and has no room left,

  Mr. Rounds sells the box to a publisher

  and moves to another box.