Norman J. Olson


Image Poem #27

A row of automobiles
lined up in the twilight
like red speckles
on the blacktop. Imaginary
palm trees wrinkled in my
fingers
as the light from unseen candles
burned me. My eyeballs
rolled across the dusty, tessellated floor
as I sat in the food court remembering
the traffic, sipping diet soda through a
red-striped straw.

Caught in their shining carapaces
in petroleum fumes and
gridlock, the human
beings melted
back into mud. Road raging palm
trees gripped the steering
wheels as swallows
swooped unseen
in the green, uneven light.

*Previously published in Red River Review, August 2001


In The Food Court

the food court glows
beneath
a dirty
skylight. bright primary colors
tear the air
to shreds as the future swoops
from store to store. the
cash register screen blinks
red and green
like some insane equation
and
children wonder why
we think this is fun.
high above the skylight vees of Canadian geese fly southeast
tiny robots walk around
the tessellated floor
and
tear their plastic hair. the
shoes of skeptics
are the bane
of these miniature machines
and
rodents and viruses
are their competition.


typing government reports

periscopes hang from the sky
like
the blind eyes
of eternity. my fingers click clacking
keys
and my knees
are buckling with every other step.
everything I think seems incredibly stupid
the street walks
away from
me
and tiny space aliens tiptoe across
the icy waves of the
north atlantic ocean. the water
in my imagination is as
lime
green.


chilly webs of lightning

chilly webs of lightning
spackle the sky
like cracks in the universe. imaginary
globes of fire
drift through
the rings of
Saturn
and the monsters of the id
fill the imaginary void
with howling.
the honeysuckle vine twines itself around a rusty trellis
blistering hot
bolts of lightning
connect imaginary
force fields
with giant
sparks
webbed like cracks
entangled in the
universe.


Unsafe Sex In The Suburbs

There is no expiation. There is no
interdiction. There are only crows
roosting in the crabapple tree. The
apocalypse turns out to be a
cellular problem and the soul
is nothing but a bowl
of chemical soup.
Somebody give Bernini a Martini . . .
Neatly trimmed lawns curse
the sod that pounds
grass up into the naked air.
Grass grows best in rotting flesh but
fertilizer will do.
The raucous birds cry and that is the only
benediction
the atomic number of carbon
has to give.
God is pushing a lawnmower across the
pellucid sky. Sixteen year old girls have saddled
up the apocalyptic horses and are riding
among the pastel houses. They cannot see that the
gene pool has become an oblong swimming
pool filled with acid rain, dead
cats and chlorine.
My hands are shaking even as I type this . . .
Cathedrals of bones are floating above the
holy Ganges which is
desperately polluted. Words fall from my fingers
like shit from the asshole of the damned
but still,
I carry an elephant of awareness on my back.
Capitalist birds are gobbling sunlight
like they
own a thermonuclear furnace and happy
crows are roosting in the
twisted blades of the crabapple
tree.

*Previously published in Cultural Logic, Volume 3, Spring 2000