Tim Schaefer's Blog, page 6

EFFORTLESS

Imaginary Garden With Real Toads

You've probably always wondered
why the aliens 
(not the ones at the border) 
look the way they do
with their huge eyes
and heads and
emaciated bodies
but it's easy to figure out

Brick and mortar died
and it became so effortless
for us to have everything we wanted
ordered online and delivered
right to our door
from food
to the clothes we wear
to the cars we drive

We never had to leave the house
(except when the toilet was backed up)
we never got any exercise
we sat for hours upon end
day and night
staring into our phones
and it made our eyes
and our heads grow huge
and our bodies devolve into
these little stick figures

And you've always wondered why
the "aliens" look so strange
but they are from the future

And yes
they are us

THE MAIN THING

Imaginary Garden With Real Toads

I don't care
about your poem

What I mean is
I DON'T CARE...

if your poem is political
I just won't be discussing
it with you

if your poem is personal
as long as you are
only crying in ways that
don't show on the outside

if your poem is salacious 
as long as it's funny and dirty 
at the same time

if your poem
is a prose poem if you
don't mind me saying it's prosaic

if your poem is a sonnet
I'll just imagine you
in your Easter Bonnet 

if you stole your poem
from someplace else as long as
it's nothing I've already read

if your poem is an erasure poem
(you should have erased it
before anyone saw it)

The main thing is 
that you get on with it 

because
we
both
know
this
ends 
badly

for him
for you
for me 
quite possibly for the world
and most assuredly
for this poem

OF WALLS AND BALLS

Imaginary Garden With Real Toads
If you're looking for true love
then you must WAVE constantly
it attracts more attention

A wave is just a bird
winging over the walls
we've erected
to keep everyone else out


They're really not real at all
in a certain way
and in another way
they are very real

Violate the laws of physics
and you will see what I mean
like when you rush headlong
into that brick wall

The wall is just an illusion
but it still hurts like hell
now doesn't it?

Ha ha
that's The Joke

Like when you swing at the ball
and miss you feel one way
and when you swing at the ball
and crush it you feel another way
but the ball is just the ball
and isn't responsible
for your feelings
even though you've taken
yours out on it
wham-o
crushed that sucker good

We have lots of exculpatory
evidence that clears the ball
of any wrongdoing

Pedants put out humorless
poems with devastating endings
designed to make you feel
the pain of individuals
or entire cultures wronged

The one thing we will regret
most from the other side
of the divide 
is that we took ourselves
way too seriously

Just play the game
and have a ball

ANYWAY

Imaginary Garden With Real Toads


Sometimes I just have to stop 
an say to myself
what the HELL you doin man?

an then I think well
I ain't these candidates
wavin the Good Book and the flag
around like they was the ones
who invented em
so addicted to playin that game
till it's not even about the money
or the power anymore
it's just about the rush I get
when I hear them chanting my name

no...I ain't doin that...

an' then I think
am I a junkie
shootin shit into my arm
an between my toes
lyin
stealin
betrayin
sellin mah goddamn
soul for the next fix
(or just the next pack of cigs)

an I say no... ain't doin that...
(so already things are lookin up) 

an I ain't workin for Monsanto
raping and ripping off 
the world
an I ain't the ones making
those telltale trails in the sky
with God knows what is comin
out the ass end of those planes
an I ain't running some online scam
from an internet cafe somewhere
in Nigeria duping lonely 
and gullible folks out of their
hard earned savings
an I ain't some serial killer
but I am a cereal killer
every morning
an it occurs to me that 
most of the good you can do 
in this world 
may be defined more by all
the bad you stay away from
so I'll keep on feelin my oats
and eating my spinach
an watching Popeye cartoons 
an laughin my ass off
an thinkin...

man 
you ain't such a bad dude
after all...
anyway
it could be worse

SIVVY

Imaginary Garden With Real Toads
I think of all the decades
I eked it out
and scratched it out
and to what end 
I ask myself  
but I did it
and I still don't know
why you couldn't manage
the simple multi-tasking
of putting one foot forward
and then the other one
and then the other one again
it's called life
and I still don't know why
with all you had
and what you left behind
you didn't want it.

Yes, I'm pissed at you
having seen most of your pictures 
and there are a lot of them
(I can't...I can't...get over 
 that white bathing suit)
and falling in love with a dead
legend is strictly the purview of
hopeless romantics and I raise
my hand
no longer
ashamed 
having been around
a few live ones in my time.

And you need to know that there
is the person and there is the legend
and the two don't necessarily have
to have a lot to do with one another. 

But the legend
rolls head over ass downhill
in all that white powder 
until it becomes larger than life 
or at least as big
as Frosty's balls and 
that's disproportionate to what
any human can carry.

In you last collection
you mentioned carbon monoxide
multiple times--
you were dropping hints
like Hansel and Gretel 
with a loaf of Wonder Bread.

Yes, you weren't right in the head.
Is that all we're going to say?
Is that where we should leave it?

Maybe, like me,  
you asked yourself
to what end...to what end... 
and saw the answer come up empty.

You wrote: We should meet in another life,
we should meet in air, me and you.

I'm just crazy enough to think
you might have been talking to me.

CONTRIBUTION

Imaginary Garden With Real Toads
Note: Today's poem is an encore presentation...one I originally posted way back in 2011. Time flies. Which is what this one is all about. Among my current readers, I am certain there are many, perhaps most, who haven't seen it. So please add your comments, if so moved, to the "vintage" comments already staring back at us like a sepia-tinged photo from the past at the bottom of the page.

Everyone who was alive in 1885 has jumped ship.Where'd they go? We don't know. But they've taken their secrets with them.
And you and I, fast becoming museum pieces, are on that same journey from the relevant to the obscure--eyes soon to be staring from a sepia-toned photo in the glass encased confines of the local historical society.
And what have you contributed to the dialogue, my boy,and will any of it survive the fuzzy TV snowstorm screen of time?And what would they know of the real you if indeed a name or a photograph survived?
Still, you'd like to be remembered--and don't know why--though you think it has something to do with being loved. And you're content to write shit in silent protest of your solitude.And you feign indifference in your involuntary celibacy, telling yourself that ass isn't all it's cracked up to be--though in truth it's just like food--no big deal until you have to go without.
And you wonder at what exact moment did you cross the line from "so fine" to something more akin to what the cat drug in.And why didn't anyone warn you of the impending disaster?Now, generally, you avoid mirrors, though sometimes you seek them out with a morbid curiosity.
In elementary school we sang "Frere Jacques"and "When Those Caissons Go Rolling Along"in our gruffest soprano voices."Play That Funky Music White Boy"had not yet seared its way into our psyche--the circadian rhythm of time still on the vergeof breaking into a more primal beat.Now, all the young women are turning bi-sexual,SO TIRED of waiting for guys to call...and the beat goes on.
Dawn's curtain rises above the prairie.Actors resigned to their fatebegin to stir and vie for parking spots.Sweeping west, reptilian eyes blink and greet the sun.Palm fronds sway in the breeze,and your island dreams are dashedin the swell of concrete--the shimmering heatrising to meet the sky, and you and Iare no closer to our first hello and our last goodbye.
Day is done. The local TV newscasters--so Shirley Temple serious--so imbued with their own sense of self-importance,as if anyone will give a damnabout the words they mouth from a teleprompterten years from now...or even next week.Surely, my boy, YOU can manufacturesomething with a longer shelf-life.
Or maybe not.
Maybe just another face in the group photograph turning yellow with age--waiting for some stranger contemplating the swift passage of time.

FADED HIPSTER

The train leaves
the years recede
all your dolls 
are packed away

An old girlfriend
(collected abstract art--
an amazing piece) 
a beach hotel 
your last resort

Faded hipsters
will always dig
Steely Dan
but the world 
is a piano 
out of tune

To wit:
Inca
Oshichi
Monopoly
Nanashi No Gombe
Puff
Ra

And you hear the cries
of brooding lumberjacks
with axes to grind
drunkards and gluttons
touching and sucking
until the end
my Polack friend

And you love 
the precision of 
numbers
the only things 
that will never leave you 
but merely accrue
until you're down
for the count

A hand reaches out
for something or
someone
grasping thin air
the room runs out of
oxygen
and the world
is a snuffed candle

Any last words?

BE MY VALENTINE

Imaginary Garden With Real Toads


February 14th arrives...

Like Audrey Hepburn 
crying in the rain
like Rita Hayworth
dancing into your dreams
like a golden slipper
slipping through your fingers.

Love will take you nowhere
but it can get you through the night.

Like Kim Novak
and William Holden
slow dancing to "Moonglow"
like Bill Murray and
Scarlett Johansson tripping
through Tokyo
like Brando dropping his pants
on the dance floor
like Sylvia Plath
singing "Nothin' Says Lovin'
Like Something From The Oven"
like a mysterious painting
of Laura hanging on the wall...


I made you up inside my head.

Who cares.
Let's go to bed.

BREAKFAST TIME IN AMERICA

Imaginary Garden With Real Toads
Corn flakes get so soggy
so fast
not like grape nuts
which will hold up for a while.
So be quick with your flakes
and let your nuts soak a while.

Do you miss any of the houses
you used to live in?
Or any of the mouses
that stayed there with you?
Or did you just methodically murder them?

Order. 
Chaos. 
You want fries with that?

The fakers and the fakirs come and go
charming your snake for a while
until someone yells:
Put that thing down!

What will be your saving grace
a la Steve Miller in a psychedelic haze,
and if you only save face
by saying grace
will that be enough for you?

Life is a game
pick a struggle
take a side
or just sit in the stands
drink beer
and shout obscenities.

To work on the work
is all there is left.
And all that matters.

ALONG FOR THE RIDE

Imaginary Garden With Real Toads

This ship is sinking fast
women and Chaldeansinto the lifeboats!
Lucky for me 
the Evil Jungle Princessis along for the ride
oozing poetryfrom every poremischievously crypticgrin inducing
a morbid fixation(like Jackson Browne)with lawyers in lovethe wayward esoteric worddropping out of the blueand landing where you'd least expect like a North Korean missile gone wonky into the sea   Look it up, peasants! I can hear her say
Turning pit bosses
from pit bulls
into puppy dogs
the Princess floats 
through the crowd
Roulette as a spectator sport
is infinitely more economical
the house advantage 
reduced to zilch 
the grizzled veterans 
laying it on the line
grimace and groan
as The Princess calls out
psychically selected numbers
from the sidelines 
too early in the game for money
where your mouth is but not for
wild thing...I think you MOVE me!

And yes he's likely crazywe agreed
but it makes for some intriguing timesas everything he throws upas a distractionmerely results in anothercall to action though I've tried to stayabove the frayin my detached and graceful wayfor if Nietzche is rightand we live the exact same lifeover and overthen I'm for grinnin'toastin'
and singin' let that wheel spin round
just one more time!