Surreal-Absurd Sampler Adam J. Maynard
“Surrealism and Dada are among the artistic forms that have long fed in to my writing. Gallons of Gertrude Stein, smatterings of Edith Sitwell and Stevie Smith. Mouthfuls of Michaux, currents of Kafka and Carrington, Donald Barthelme dropping around for tea.
I’m also interested, in the visual art of: George Grosz, Francis Picabia, Sigmar Polke, Martin Kippenberger, the list goes on; along with certain records like, The Red Krayola’s, Hazel.
It has something to do with piecing together disparate elements, or a collaging instinct.
These poems are from a manuscript I’m currently working on tentatively titled, The World is Not the World.
They were made in a room overlooking a graveyard with giant Cedars swaying in the wind. They were intended to slow down time and thought somehow, so as to see things from alternative angles and through differently refracted perspectives.
Essentially, they’re deliberate attempts to be partially wrong.” - Adam J. Maynard
SOFT POEM NINE
I came over
In my skeleton costume
Walked in the raspberry rain
Dream lights drenched
In cool pop music
Blossoms everywhere
Nothing in the light
Or in any of their voices
SOME TREES ARE BIGGER THAN OTHERS
The whirring of the day
Seen through crumpled
Pale green curtains, crying
A cat blinks in the sunlight
Cool breeze passes through the trees
With recourse to the day
An ochre fable
Under steely clouds
Pirouetting among the Petunias
The dark light changing
Taking a glass of melancholy
Becoming evangelical about it
All the colours of the day
Unwinding in the universe
The sound of distant lawnmowers
Cat appears ponderous
Gazes steadily down
In to the churchyard void
At Blackbirds, squirrels
Darting between gravestones
Fascinated with the clear energy
Of the day
SOFT POEM 3
A fly plays
A green drum kit
In puffs of blue cloud exploding
Gold air that got rich
Off the parents and took off
There is no response
Alas (we are not wearing the coat of the day)
But a little optimism never hurts
And of course
We can invest in something later
I’ve been spying on an alien (which is gross)
Watching his face melting in the mirror
Singing his song, drifting along
In a winter wonderland
Of cold black space and time
THE WASTELAND
Silver rain streams
Down grey window panes
Plumes of cloud wonder
Through the wind
Beautiful weeds grow upon the wasteland
And the grasshopper sips his champagne
Wondering if water enjoys being frozen
A spider explores the ridges and canyons
Of the fruit piled high in a green ceramic bowl
‘They will never regenerate certain areas’
He slowly thinks
An impoverished green light
Hangs in the trees
Some new strange game
In the now quiet world
A polite fly alights on a banana
The air outside includes wasps and bats
Citrus light reflects in glass
Raindrops drop
Dreams bring feeling
A little warmth in the air
Suspended in time
Green flowers flower
The polite fly, flies
THE RATS
We awkwardly arrange ourselves
Around the dinner table
Given parts to play within this fiction
The snowy rain comes down
Lost in a blizzard of flying papers
A culmination of various mental storms
The Rats are playing tonight
Yet we’re exiled to the sofa, the crisp leaves
Dancing outside in the wind as we begin to stagnate
I attempt to sustain some kind of narrative
About things and things
How they move among other things
Time moves between rooms
We become overwhelmed by the trees
The quiet and complex wind
The bingo sprees of the real housewives
Waving their cartoon money around
Overwhelmed by the universe
As dark and as vast as ever
‘This is a wonderful amount of money!’
Time moving slowly between rooms
Things and things and things and things
A splash of this, a sprinkle of that
SPRING MATERIALISM
On this blustery afternoon
What is the other side of what?
A grey Paul Nash sky looms
Days fall through other days
A bear climbs a pine tree
Monkeys fly through the air
Through the effects of bold light
Yellow flowers lurk in shadows
Discussing what the wind was
What the wind now is
Conversation drifts through the air
Up beyond the blankets of grey light
Hanging behind the trees
I hear a bird in the bush:
“We are merely a series of moments
Not the terms to which
We have been reduced”
The wind dwindles
Brilliant yellow flowers shine out
From the base
Of the student trees
Adam J. Maynard lives in Oxford. His poetry has appeared in: Prelude, FENCE, SAND Journal, West Wind Review, Abraham Lincoln Magazine, Zembla, Purple, TANK, Neru Phuyt Magazine, Lamination Colony, Elderly, LIT, Robot Melon, Pineapplewar, Spooky Boyfriend, New Wave Vomit, Kill Author, The Corduroy Mtn, Pangur Ban Party, Noo Journal, Red Lightbulbs, UP Literature, Housefire, Horse Nihilist and others. His book of short fiction Stumble was published by Pulp Books. His chapbook, The Frogs, was published by Plain Wrap Press. A chapbook, Three Poems (printed at The Bodleian Bibliographical Press) has also most recently been published.
