WHAT IS FUNNY?
There’s a man standing before an open window, 37 storeys up. He’s wearing a Groucho nose and glasses. On the ground, like the open mouth of a tiny frog, a bowlful of water awaits him.
His feet are normal. He wears large red shoes.
Someone has replaced his left eyeball with his right, his right testicle with his left, has replaced his skinny arms with wings.
On the horizon, a cream pie rises amid fleshy pink clouds. These are everyday materials and we are oh so very tired.
*
I didn't know this:
In The Tin Woodman of Oz, Nick Chopper (the Tin Woodman) finally sets out to find his lost love, Nimmie Amee, but discovers that she has already married a man constructed partly out of his own discarded limbs. For the Tin Woodman, this encounter with his former fiancée is almost as jarring as his experiences being transformed into a tin owl, meeting another tin man, and conversing with his ill-tempered original head. (see here for more.)
And thus (though I'm not sure if the ending is too pat for me.)
THE WOOD TINMAN
ax enchanted it cuts
off bits of
my body one
by
one: left leg, arm, ear, test
icle
right ear, nost
ril,
leg, fingers, head
each replaced with its self
made of tin
later I meet the flesh
girl who I was going to marry
but she’s already married all my cut
parts together
my doleful empty torso a hollow
clang
I wish I were of wood
the jigsaw of myself
the sudden
a single image
solved
*
OUTLAW REVOLUTION CAPTAIN
In the days before Marco Polo discovered the Miniature Doberman here on Planet of the Tired Clown, the Unconventional Creeps Race began at
Comments
turn
have we
recovered
our small
Ontario ears?
a cream pie
every day
seems replaced
already
exit
as if one could simply
walk into the wide world
maybe the televisions
watch
an ear is a small door
watch yourself
cream puff yesterday
has replaced
already