When I saw the photo prompt of Tess Kincaid of Magpie Tales this week–a wonderful painting/photo of a swimmer partly buried in sand, my brain filled instantly with heavy poems. But in the midst of a sun-filled walk, silliness came to mind, and, true to nature, I opted for that:
Futility-Ha!
The fledgling surrealist, mired in schadenfreude, built his
scene with greyed hues and competitive passion–
Take that, Dali, with your dribble of melting clocks, your
self-referential facial hair; your stinking thrown arched cat–
He sniffed.
And you, de Chirico,
forget the portentous shadows–he darkened
the outlines of empty rowboat– that grandiose
trapped geometry, I’ll
show you Futility.
A moment bent towards the palette,
milking color. What he sought was
the suggestive but mysterious, just a touch
of squeamish–wrinkles in caught
flesh: I’ll put my oar in now, ha ha!
(The tenor of that laugh was getting worrisome, thought the
studio assistant, scurrying for more turp.)
A person chest-swallowed in sand, a nearby boat, parked
boat, sober waiting
boat– So much for Rimbaud–dab dab–(a muted blue
that should be steel filled the inner keel)– and it will be my passenger
who is sunk
and not the ship; the actor, the observer both, an
image to get stuck from
shore to shore-–
To turn up the volume (as it were),
he bared the dim-pale back, turned shoulders
to swimmer’s rounds,
sculpted with cylindrical precision (but unclear
detail) a bathing cap.
Profundity, eh! he grinned, the assistant quietly
checking the studio door–sometimes he locked it
from the inside–
And you, Magritte! How do you like
them apples?
P.S. A few side notes: the creator of the true image (without elephant) is Mostafa Habibi, who, to the best of my knowledge, has no beef with Salvador Dali, Giorgio diChirico, Arthur Rimbaud, or Rene Magritte, all of whom I admire greatly.
P.P.S. – if you like silliness, please please please check out my new silly, but fun, teen novel, Nose Dive, by Karin Gustafson, illustrated (terrifically) by Jonathan Segal. On Amazon. When you’re there–take a look at Going on Somewhere (poetry) or 1 Mississippi (elephants). Thanks much!
ManicDDaily 
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