David Hickman

2nd Collage of The princess

 
In the invisible universe the prisons are well funded.

The men and women of the sacred trust

strip the detainee and chain him to the fence.

The empire is pleased

and sits down to lunch.

In the right quadrant of the picture

a child is slurping milk while chewing a mutated apple.

His skin is tattooed with the language of bureaucrats.

Over his head and to the left, a great transverse tear

rips the snowfields as they sigh under

Betelgeuse.

The winter of repressed memory

haS become the winter of intention.

A sparrow sets down on the sidewalk to play,
and becomes the wish
of a man taking aspirin
while he whispers his secret
into a grove of trees:

“I've spent all my life learning to be a human being,
only to find that human beings are as pathetic as me.”

To his left a bird falls out of the sky
and earnestly sighs as
the horses founder
until even the eyelids of the princess twitch
and a beautiful stranger accuses the sky.

. . .All has disappeared of hope and consequence

and the toom toom toom

of the baritone with the boutonniere

breezes past as he chases the whistle of the train

into a dull orange sea of gelatinous air.

Where minor beauty means major green

and dresses blow across the waves

with retro pink and blue bouffant.

As lice inherit the blue of their hair

and shadows skate across the river

to bend and genuflect as they disappear.

In the center of the scene,

The princess is lying across the bed.

She sighs at the thought of her defeat

then fashions it into the victory of her arousal.

Outside, on the ledge, a bird pecks monotonously

at a crevice in the wood.

The sky passes brightly overhead.

A mushroom cloud blooms

beyond the hedges.

. . .It’s business now . . . and the business of business.