surreal poetry
Surrealist poetry embodies the essence of poetry itself, drawing upon shocking imagery and lyrical incongruities to comment on the inner-workings of the mind.
Once Upon a Grown Up
I toss, I turn. It is unclear where the cemetery stops, and the real world begins. The one with grass and trees and birds that sing the songs to others of their kind that simply ring out the idea: I am alive. The world I used to belong to before I started, bleary-eyed, down this road with a single wooden post I barely stopped to read. “What,” I think it said, but I will not look back. My feet, once so quick to skirt the sand composed of crunched up bones now drag heavy in the dust made mud in this land far too familiar now. How long have I been walking? What I would give for a drink of water. Though, I suppose, there is now nothing left to give. A lock of hair that once knew sunlight, I would shave it all off for a splash of rainwater against my feet were I able to lap the liquid greedily from my own toes. The memory of every smile I ever made. I would allow each one to blossom over my lips only to stopper them in a bottle for the consumption of a voyeur of emotions, puzzling over the idea of joy with no appreciation, nor comprehension, for the crinkled skin around my eyes or the pinprick of a dimple that calls out with inimitable authenticity. I would hold them up to receive but a patch of moistened moss so as to squeeze out the last few drops of wetness and taste it upon my parched tongue in this foreign wasteland where I have fallen once again. But behind shuttered eyelids in this land of skeletons, I find only the plotted path before me and plod on to the promise of that ephemeral land of “Next.”
By Allison Baggott-Rowe4 years ago in Poets
Poem of a crazy dream
You were there, your face looked like a leopard then it transitioned into an angel moon. Ghosts danced about then fire fell from the sky and the fire was glowing multicolored orbs. Where they struck steam sprouted and out leaped multicolored frogs, bright and glowing and poisonous. The ground shook and the frogs vaporized. A deep low voice grumbled “This is the sixth extinction.” The forests burned and glaciers fell from the sky, and we were in a cold ocean, green glowing sharks flying around us. The ocean drained and we laid on a cracked desert littered with dried bones of sharks and dinosaurs. You looked at me and said you loved me anyways. But I realized I wasn’t there. You spoke the words to no one. Maybe to all earth and existence. The little left of it. Then I was in New York, but New York was like Disneyland but with metal towers and everything a giant mall and around every corner was a new celebrity, and I walked until New York ran out and I was back in the desert with the giant shark bones, but I was so much smaller. I looked down and the New York Disneyland mall was the size of a shoe. It sunk in the sand and out crawled a shoe sized scorpion. I noticed the sun had set and visible galaxies swirled above. Either the reflection of a galaxy shimmered on the scorpion’s black mirror like shell, or it was transparent, and a galaxy swirled inside of it. “Where are you?” I asked. Laughter rained down on me. “You are alone,” a voice said. “All else is an illusion.” A string orchestra played a sad song and I cried.
By Cameron Glenn4 years ago in Poets
