Drew Pisarra

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World on a Wire

This opinion is not acceptable.
Nevertheless, aliens are watching us.
Of that I’m fully aware.  I’ve caught
them hovering below dropped ceilings,
watched them watch me without judgment,
without comment, without ears.
This is just one of life’s unspeakables.

This position is not that believable,
not even to me who knows that slaves
couldn’t build the Great Pyramids anymore
than Druids could build Stonehenge or
any random Paleontologist is going to
rebuild some Missing Link. Look in
an ape’s eye? I’m doubtful to say the least.

The facts are all quite simple. The world
went from flat to round to ellipsoid.
Jesus was murdered in the year zero.
Neitzsche slayed God’s father in 1882.
Physicists insist time isn’t linear
yet everyone hates it when I say,
“The future happened yesterday.”

An Alienist walks into a bar and sits next to
an alien from  nearly 37 galaxies away.
What does he learn over scotch and soda?
Science is the white chocolate
of religions. General consensus is
the dullest part of consciousness.
Acceptance will never set you free.

 

Lili Marleen

You thought nothing of it when I said
to your super, “We’re sisters!”
But today, two hours after you leave
for vacation, I ask him to let me in.
I’m not going to steal anything.
I just feel the need to sit amid the trappings
of a life I wish I’d lived or shared.

When the door shuts behind me,
and the super descends the stairs,
I speak your name aloud as if it were
a kind of spell that ensures that you
are not here and will not return.
Wandering around the empty rooms,
every thing brags of your success:

There’s a funny lamp that resembles
a lanky robot and an odd yellow
sculpture (no bigger than a candy bar)
that looks like a warped figure eight.
The old dumbwaiter’s stuck for eternity.
A bathtub, recently used, has claws for feet.
And then there are all these books.

Why all those awful Joyce Carol Oates
novels? Doris Lessing or Margaret Atwood
I could understand but Oates?
I open Blonde, then scribble the word
VOMIT on a page you’ll never re-read.
I’ve written in pencil for whatever
that’s worth to you and yours.

I peek in a closet and spot a small model
of a house with two foil antennae poking
out of a furry pink roof. If you invite me
back for your winter solstice party,
I’ll insist that you put it on the mantelpiece.
I could be a lot of help. For one thing,
this place needs a serious dusting.

Atop the kitchen cabinets, bottles crowd
around each other as if awaiting a sketch.
Nearby, three black-bottomed pots
and a cast-iron frying pan hang
on the wall above the stove. A fifth
nail suggests some missing cookware.
I can’t find it anywhere. And I look.

From the fridge. I pull out a purple pear
and a half-eaten hunk of buffalo cheese,
both of which I slice up to eat. Before
I leave, I wash the knife and flick on the radio.
I turn the volume low. Perhaps when you
come home, you’ll think there’s a stranger
about when it’s just the evening news.

 

Drew Pisarra is unemployed. Or rather employed with activities that sometimes pay and sometimes don't but definitely do not fall within the 9 to 5 construct and for that he is deeply grateful.