Two Prose Poems by John Olson

Seesaw

The sky leans over the water and rides the meaning of the waves. The windows are splattered with rain. An angel of the morning throbs with apprehension. I continue my research on the harmonica. The silk of listening necessitates the sparkle of words. No thought is so obscure that it doesn’t in some fashion flirt with description. My sad green desire swarms with expectation. How many sounds fill a single day? One of them is the sound of a cat eating, smacking little gobs of wet food chicken or turkey against his upper palate. There is warmth in prayer. The day is without precedent. It’s time to gather up all the shadows and make something blaze into reality. Something like thread, or need, or a pain suckling the headlight of a jaguar for the milk of paradise. Isn’t that why people go fishing? There’s a treasure in your eyes called seeing. Can you see it? Can you see seeing? Seeing is easily seen through. Sewing is different. Sewing is more like seesaws. I saw myself see a seesaw and sagged into prophecy with the burden of my testament. Life is often sticky this way. Sometimes I just ramble on for hours saying whatever comes into my head. It’s a lot like swimming. I have to keep moving to stay afloat. Meander. It’s what rivers do. Ripple and riddle and rupture into resplendent aqua. The light is swollen with color. There is so much more to a chair than a chair. Is that a door in your head or just an epiphany? There is so much more that I would like to show you. But the words don’t exist. They smolder like mirrors at the bottom of a swamp. Infinity goes around in a brass hat going on and on about language and how it smells of consciousness and weighs as much as a mathematical logic teased into eighty three eels and a football. The hotel lobby crawls with meat. The air is warm. The incongruities are raw and the grapes are delicious. What more can be said? When it comes to a seesaw there is up and there is down and up and down are interchangeable. What does not exist exists in its non-existence. And that, my friend, is a suitcase. Let’s pack it with whistling and go. Travel the highways make fun of the law. Make memories out of pins. Mythologies out of straw. 

Reality Is Hard to Describe with Bicycles

Reality is hard to describe with bicycles. But why even try? There’s so much of it around. There’s as much reality as there are people. Everybody’s reality is unique to them. But doesn’t that sound glib? I mean, we have to agree on some things, or there wouldn’t be any reality at all. There’d be nothing but sloppy solipsistic anarchy. Crazy people. Morning would arrive every morning in a sweat. You’d never know what to expect. Maybe that’s why some people need jobs. It helps to structure the day. Sometimes I like to run water over a fork. Hold it under the kitchen faucet. It fascinates me. I see a little reality happening there. The reality of water. The reality of a fork. Stainless steel. Tines. And then along comes a religion and it all unravels and becomes a fantasy again. Darkness at the break of noon.  Some religions are helpful. They’re full of singing and glories and deliverance. Fat men in sleighs. Reindeer. Angels. Peculiar attitudes toward money. Me, I believe in the religion of incongruity. Things that don’t fit. Or look like they don’t fit and then you discover holy cow they do fit. If you look hard enough you can always find relations between things. For instance if I imitate a cardboard box it isn’t long before someone comes along and tries to put something into me. An extension cord or sweatshirt. Can I do a metaphor for you? Personality is eye spice. Writing is propagation. Reality is a hatband. Or schnauzer. I don’t know. Let reality be reality, said Lao Tzu. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like. Right now nothing is flowing, except my mind. My hands. My wife’s hand as she draws a wolf. The cat as he stares at the floor. Ok, that’s not flowing, I know, but his form is flowing, the form of the cat is flowing, trust me, it’s flowing. Like I said. Reality is hard to describe with bicycles. So why not use hands? Cats? Metaphors? Asian philosophers? Western philosophers? Hungry philosophers? Any kind of philosopher you can find that isn’t drunk or horny. Desire can skew one’s sense of wisdom. That which is wise and balanced and sensible and sane. Or what? Get on a bicycle and go for a ride. That’s what.