Four Poems by Mark Parsons

"Pricelesss” Effectively Means Something Is of Great Value, But Only If Someone Is Willing to Pay the Exorbitant Price That You’re Oh So Reluctant to Put on Whatever You’re Selling 

 

 

1.  Bottle and Sell It 

 

Bottle-necked, 

Self-defense 

Claims abound 

 

In the tightly packed 

And contagious 

Crowd 

 

Isolation vault, 

As a metal crown—vinyl lined, 

One-sixteenth 

 

Inch 

Tin-plated sheet iron 

 

Disk 

Compressed— 

On the wound alights. 

 

Draft angle edge 

Flares to 

Shaved brows 

And wide swaths of 

Spirit gum; 

 

Pendant flange 

Crimped 

Or bent, twenty-four 

Corrugated teeth 

Curving inward per second 

Grip 

 

After the manner of latches 

Engaging with keepers. Implantation traumatic, 

The annular jaws of a second, 

Pharyngeal 

Showbusiness death-spiral 

Forms a reliable clutch-type engagement with wearer, 

Professional object, the talent, 

A fantasy icon ideal for pop-culture obsessed masses; 

Vortex of contact like helical braid 

Of bamboo 

Woven to make an imported Chinese 

Finger trap gag toy 

Thus demeans and humiliates, 

Shifts the perspective, empowers the amateur 

Objects that make up his public, 

The audience 

There in the theatre dark— 

Locking contact at many points, 

Ample space 

For insertion of makeshift device 

Operating as lever: 

Any usual, 

Ready, 

Free, 

And available instrument; 

Little manual 

Force required 

Of one big idea-parched 

Patrons in search of a narrative fulcrum. 

Homesteaders 

Long after noise of the gunshot’s been swallowed up 

Under a sky that’s as blue as his eyes, 

Pioneers of the cinema mainstream, the audience 

Gathers and salvages fragments of crassly-designed diegetic reality: 

Story and character, plot and direction, 

The music and costumes, the placement of products to be 

Holiday gift-giving must-haves, 

Or tie-ins with restaurants with money to burn, 

Or prepared to get dollars from customers trapped in food-deserts, 

Who shouldn’t be parting with theirs 

In the first place; 

Unoriginal, vapid and obvious 

Content—creatively vacuous, formally fumbling— 

The spectators cobble together 

And dovetail as joints 

To connect up with social and cultural aspects: 

A viral, pre-release marketing strategy, junkets and buzz, the premier and release, 

And the critic’s reception, the aggregate score 

Posted on internet websites, the public responding and counted alongside the pros, 

With production details from the industry insider magazines— 

Fashioning numerous narrative crossroads, 

A collectivized mind to crowd-source an A.I. story design application, 

The so-called “talent,” the actor, 

His life and 

Political orientation, 

Prevailing professional circumstance— 

All of these 

Just more ingredients used 

In a range of the possible, probable stories 

Concocted by hobbyists, bricoleur 

Offspring of middle- and upper-class families 

Bonded to futureless minimum wage hospitality [industry] jobs, 

Pooling uneven and granular 

Data to map their society’s dark unacknowledged 

Prohibited, albeit 

Rich in the natural cultural resource of 

Histories, fictions, accounts, 

Feudal interior 

Ruled by invisible despots 

Whose laws and decrees are enforced 

By familiars and minions, 

And known to the denizens only by rumor. 

This is the place where the new meta-narratives grow. 

In the age of the activist star, ideology 

Supplants all 

Practical thoughts, as the lead 

Pushes progressive ideals to remain relevant, 

Relevant 

To continue to do what he does, 

What he’s done with the power bestowed by success and celebrity. 

Getting his start he performed, 

Acted while famished and trembly from rock-bottom blood sugar levels 

And didn’t get paid but instead 

Afterward loaded a plate with food that was left in buffet chafing pans 

Scorched by small silver cans 

Filled with pink, waxy goo made from denatured and jellified alcohol: 

The congealed and / or desiccant food 

Reeked of burnt metal because the wells had run dry 

Before his performance was over 

And none of the servers had bothered to fill them so… 

He could smell it, the smell, 

While he ate,  

Seated on overturned red plastic milk crate and 

Able to feel so acutely he saw it, 

The slim diamond mesh brand his butt cheeks 

Through cheap flimsy stage clothes. 

Having spent 

Countless hours, 

The slow time between gigs, 

Idle in tenements, studios, and apartment hotels, 

Watching the frothy vermillion and glittery bristle of segmented, bead-like bodies 

Of fire ant regiments 

Breaking ranks, 

Swarming through wide gauge 

Holes in the drains of anonymous stainless steel 

Kitchen sinks 

To form spider veins, 

Lightning skeins, 

Map a drunk’s broken blood vessel 

Pink nose 

On the unidirectional satiny finish 

Brushed metal, 

Red lines that years later 

Through abnormal excessive expression of keratin 

Would look black 

To an actor who’d 

Long before 

Gotten used to 

Sinning 

Against his God-given talent, 

Like dots that stopped 

Moving forever. 

Every dot 

Free of income tax, 

Old boy, that’s the only way, 

His accountant said 

As he leaned 

Forward to peer past his wingtips at rest on the scuffed 

Narrow shelf, 

Stomachs flush 

With restraining bar, 

The two men 

Born aloft, 

Gently dandled on 

Piled-up hay 

Observation wheel. 

Once again 

He can hear his accountant’s words 

Muffled inair-padded confines of facial prosthetic appliance, 

And ponders the conflict 

Of public and private the film deconstructs, 

And its brutish and primitive irony-free exploitative agenda— 

So casual, heedless, and painfully 

Unselfconscious 

Aboutits innate lack of humanity— 

Makes him uncomfortable trying to justify 

His own role, 

His involvement a black eye to cultish empowered consumers 

Informed and aware of the ramifications of choices they make in the marketplace, customers 

Who demandmore than the usual empty, symbolic display 

Of some ad executive’s ethically stunted perception of social responsibility. 

It’s the politics 

Of consumption, 

Evolutionary throwback 

Cave-dweller 

Values embedded except… 

Absent 

Any malicious intent 

Found in innocuous products 

Targeting every conceivable stripe of consumer and niche of the marketplace. 

He explains to himself, 

He repeats to himself 

Like a mantra, 

How he does this despicable thing, 

Does it for good that is greater than any theoretical harm 

Proven in seminars, classrooms, and lectures 

He never attended 

Because he was raised in a working-class family 

With parents who wouldn’t allow it, 

Allow him to throw away time and / or money pursuing the liberal arts. 

He falls short, 

His soul laid 

Quavery, naked, and drenched with sweat 

In the stifling, dehydrating full-body alien suit, and so promises 

To do good, 

To help others less fortunate. 

Sweat droplets 

Stinging and caught in his lashes he blinks, 

An unconscious attempt to assuage the guilt that he feels, 

As he’s forced to confront his aversion to poverty, hardship; the tension increases 

And readies to surface, 

Explode through a mask manufactured to frighten, 

Erupt like a lesion 

From swelling, infection.

 

2.  Mask 

 

Simian features and contours 

Maintained under 

High pressure gas contents, 

Foam latex 

Bony browridge shelf 

Over eyes, 

Spheroid-shaped jaws 

Of the face-puppet mouth protrude; 

Maxillary trajectory 

Mimics chimpanzee prognathic morphology, 

Canopies forward, 

Projecting incisors set off by the 

Large white canines as jaws open wide, baring 

Weaponized teeth 

Lining an orbit that’s empty and screaming 

Its blindness in glistening pink 

Outrage 

To the skittish trills and demented coos 

Of a sleazy 70s 

No-budget 

Z-movie 

Waking nightmare of 

Ticket punched, take the ride 

Psychogenic fugue, electronic score 

By a dark, withdrawn, 

Gently humanist 

Brian Wilson on Stylophone, 

Or a pressure sensitive 

Music Easel with stylus pen, 

Harmonizing plaintive and mournful 

Over the right triangle-shaped picket fence 

Sawtooth wave 

Low bandwidth sound pulse:  the force-sensing 

Ribbon controller allows the musician to skipper the drone on tempestuous seas, 

And to wield a tremendous nostalgic fascistic authority 

Over designer tonality, and permits audible changes enacted in real time: 

Artisan specialist timbre shepherded, combed with filters 

On heaving swells, through a thousand chops, monophonic growl of the under-sound 

Treated to heavy distortion. 

Fight or flight 

Response immanent, 

Rhodes piano bass (played 

Left-handed) 

Imitates menace of 

Animal heartbeat increasing. 

Closing in, 

Zombie meatmen appraise and spin 

Brian Wilson’s enormous body, suspended from 

Dull, stainless-steel S of butcher’s hook, 

In the end, holding him steady to feed a youthful and earnest, 

Ravenous 

For his shot at the champ 

Blue collar straight man, Sylvester Stallone 

(Who was Frazier’s white stand-in) 

Heavy bag 

Body blow 

Practice in meat-packing freezer; breath condensation, 

As ragged and fraying-edged 

Hoary puffs, 

Dissipates quickly. 

Frozen ribs 

Streaked with fat 

Crunch under wrapped knuckles.
The grim reality 

Flower power conferred 

In its teeny bop, 

Bubble gum pop music wake 

Takes hold; 

Psychedelic chickens—come home to roost, 

Dayglow plumage in dark light— 

Scratch and peck 

LSD  

Streaked and flecked 

Beaks, 

Nails and spurs, 

Carving inscrutable runes 

In the dirt 

Of the barnyard 

Subconscious mind at night. 

Speed- and lust-fueled teenage symphonies 

Old enough 

To know bettermen 

Overproduced, an epiphany 

Coming too late 

To the victim:  a sharp 

Intake 

Of cold walk-in 

Freezer air. 

The two-cycle oil rich exhaust stings; 

He tastes fulsome 

Matte charcoal grey dank 

Like damp gentle tongue probe 

Of first kiss:  rainbow sheen 

Jerked and bounced, 

Pitched and heaved on the leaden lake 

Water chop, where the jet skis carve moments, white 

Furrowed arcs, open cuts 

Quickly closed 

Under overcast Labor Day 

Low-ceilingsky he remembers from 

Post-adolescence of childhood—but whose? 

Burnished to silvery 

Spatulate, 

Narrow elongate paraboloid 

Tongues, the guide bars of chainsaws 

Lick at the air without interest 

Like lizards distractedly 

Tasting the freon 

And anguish, despair of the man 

There condemned. 

The full chisel square corner 

Left cutter, drive link, to right cutter, 

Drive link array 

Blurs to black fur around curved 

Edges of sniffing prehensile probosces encircling 

The trunk of magnanimous sixties 

Free love and good will 

To consider the prospect of binding, 

The wood 

Soft, but somehow… 

Responsive, reactive to injury, 

Casual slights and dismissive behaviour 

Transformed 

Into 

Bulletin board 

Motivational fodder for anyone 

Needing some. 

Line cooks and prep cooks in garish red aprons, 

Truck stop-style ball caps with backing of mesh and front panels of foam, and the visors 

Pulled down to shield thought- and emotion-betrayal of eyes 

And crows’ feet— 

Feelings’ 

Tiny tells— 

Stand around.

 

3.  Salesmanship…The Guest…Re-writes 

  

Skin taut and numb, 

Tingly, plastic surgery rictal grin 

Settles in on his public face 

Riven with wrinkles devoid of emotion like mud 

Dried and plotted with cracks. 

Guest chair obliquely aligned with the host, 

The guest is total professional, watches his latest performance 

Through grey tint of lead glass:  in character, 

Make-up, on his knees in despair, clutching and pounding his head 

Exoskeleton, 

Overinflated air-bladders 

Limiting cervical flexion, rotation, 

His face cast up at the sky and his frictionless palms 

Clapped over audio speakers 

Transmitting instructions for blocking and lines 

The assistant director hypnotically—gently and rhythmically—burbles, 

His lips a mere inch from the pop shield 

In order to furnish an intimate, vocalist-trying to deep-throat-the-microphone sound 

But self-consciously turning away 

So to minimize thumping of aspirant plosives 

That otherwise batter the cardioid microphone diaphragm, 

Ruin the head-job illusion delivered through 

Pop screen mesh, cuing the actor it’s time to emote: 

Agony:  analog system of animatronics, controlled by a veteran 

Children’s show puppeteer, 

Animates infinitesimal muscles of mask 

To provide a complete range 

Of the most 

Fluid emotion, expression. 

The cheeks wrung 

Between vacuum-formed hands, 

Deep nasolabial creasing of furrows pronounced, 

Facial features scrunch,  

Clustered together, the bogeyman 

Viewed through a lens demonstrating severe 

Spherical aberration; 

A thick bundle of wires and cords, like braids 

Laced with bright, coloured yarn, trails out from under the headpiece 

And runs down his back to the floor and unravels, 

Like offshoots that branch at the mouth of a river, or lateral roots 

That enlarge in diameter:  surface roots 

To support the trunk and explore the soil; sinker roots 

That drop straight as plumb 

Finger and gouge the foundation below the sound stage 

To stir it invisibly, 

Under the cover of business as usual, 

Roiling and heaving the floor with the first, imperceptible 

Turns round the tap root, 

Rotations escaping the notice of all but the most hyper-vigilant 

Crew members, 

Post-traumatic survivors 

Of childhood- or family-type trauma or— 

Even much later 

(For women)—domestic or sexual violence, 

Support crew 

Getting to watch the display 

Of their special effects technological might 

(There’s no CGI on this 

One) 

(Every effect is mechanical) 

(Made an exception for bluescreen—the ending isn’t grand guignol, 

It’s an apocalypse) 

Seeing the spectacle, the sole benefit 

Work in the industry offers the folks at the bottom. 

Through an open cupola, 

Slumping over 

The armoured turret, 

The stillborn screenwriter— 

Birthed by midwives 

Who went to New Critic schools— 

Hard to penetrate 

Sloping glacis 

With pointed prow 

Armor plate 

Will diffuse the energy 

RPGs 

With shaped-charges make 

(Thickness constant, the pitch increased 

To approximate ideal form 

Of the self-reflexive ironic pose 

That is single sheet 

Or hot rolled homogenous hull material 

[Extra-solid construction helps to withstand explosive 

Reactive tiles 

Lining exterior; final effect 

Of deflect, deform, 

Ricochet); 

Vented shrouds 

Of machine gun barrels 

From globes of gun ports like doll eyes 

Blast 

Ashen plumes, orange 

Minarets, as the Other’s mysterious gaze, 

Leading the object of wrathful, transcendent desire, destination—or target?— 

However, unknown and unknowable, 

Calculated along 

The last 

Known trajectory. 

Muscular contours of body 

Stocking elastic mesh, 

Netting woven with styrene beads 

To support and shape 

The full-body alien suit or prosthesis 

Absent the major convenience of ultra-absorbency liner 

For urine recycling connected to flexible stem of accordion-crimped sippy straw, 

Outline a gesture, 

An image that looses itself from appearance, 

Slithers free of its context, the plot, for the Nielsen ratings bonanza 

Studio audience 

Lucky few. 

Malcontent millionaire actor 

Turned-villainous cultural mastermind bent on destruction 

Of globalized popular culture 

Hegemony, 

Same as he helped to create, 

Doing 

The talkshow 

Pedigree pooch circuit 

Says there’s no basis for culture of lasting importance 

And somehow avoiding enormous presumptions continues, “Slung around, 

Totally meaningless,” his exact 

Phrase, 

Said by way of indicting his own manifesto, or 

Subtext his shoddy, unprincipled body of work has established in words 

His detractors and critics have uttered aloud in their cups 

Academically, cups unaffordable working as adjunct professors at state schools. 

How much contempt can you stand? Mr. Congenial, 

Insufferably 

Polite (or “white”) 

Late-night talk show host asks 

Rhetorically, teasing the segment to follow, 

Signalingcut to commercial so 

Everyone watching at home can consider his comments, 

Infer what’s implied for themselves, 

That societal currents of trauma account for an uptick 

In sexual violence in media. 

How did you know I was going to say 

What I was going to say? 

Asked by proxy, a fetish carved 

Out of teak, out-of-teak 

Woodwork come, stain resistant 

Above the fray 

To observe and mock; 

Masturbation image or father figure 

No more, but rather 

A soon-to-be 

Never was, never had 

Talent hack 

Getting involved 

In the issue dividing the minds of his day.

I’ve included only the 1st 3 sections of “Priceless,” which has 7 sections. The poem centers around a Hollywood actor who “sins against his talent” by taking bad roles in cheap, exploitative films, and who is a composite of several real actors.

 

Untitled 

 

 

Torque-driven smart fibre-stitched catsuit 

(A lifestyle choice) 

Teaches its wearer the nebulous place that is “his.” 

(Teaches him 

In a way that's not nebulous.) 

His sight dim 

Behind olive green-painted 

Slit metal flak goggles 

Flecked steel, crimped inner curve 

Like a mouthguard, 

Or potsticker 

Shaped like a crescent moon, 

Or Marcel Duchamp’s lover’s bronze vulva cleft 

Cast invasively, Female Fig Leaf, 

Of butterfly vibrator fixed on his face buzzes a scarlet tattoo 

Like a finger that's shushing him, 

Pressed to his lips. 

The straps squeeze his full fleshy cheeks, 

Cleanly shaved jaw, an extreme 

Close-up proceeding to stroke a luxurious fairway expanse 

Of magnificent pores 

Dug out 

With long narrow square-bladed blue spades 

By groundskeepers, old 

Young 

Men's faces 

Steeped 

In a mixture of beer and cheap Mexican weed, 

And then cured in the sun until tender and burnt-out and friendly and nodding along 

As his muffled request for dismissal's ignored 

By the woman attending. 

Hi-tech applied science weave-insert mesh panels 

Of advanced engineered 

Cloth 

Sewn strategically 

Placed over intimate bodily sites 

Of conspicuous vasocongestion, flesh marked with 

Ridges to augment the surface and 

Delicate, densely 

Ennervervated mucosa, areas covered with 

Minimal fat and / or muscle and ligaments under the skin, emanate 

Intermittent 

Sub-aural low-bandwidth 

Pulses that stimulate 

Closely-set networks of nerves, 

Activaterapid adapting mechanoreceptors. 

Genital corpuscles, 

Septa-bound, 

Form knob-like mass bundles; 

Merging of pistils— 

Repeated— 

Creates inflorescence of flowers 

(A head) 

(Fertilized) 

Making a leathery cluster of drupes 

(Heads) 

That then connate as syncarp, or multiple 

Bouquets held gallantly forward, extended in offer by duplicate suitors, 

Sadistically grinning, 

Their hands forced by black hearts, 

Dontcha know, 

As each panel van 

Panel slides 

Open, 

Revealing a nosegay of wand-type massagers, 

Ergonomically 

Engineered, contoured 

Grip handles duct-taped together, 

A microphone spray 

Begging 

Repeatable quotes at a school cafeteria table 

In what’s really an atrium someone’s embellished to look like a briefing room: 

Company logo on backcloth repeated: 

The punishment apt 

For eternally 

Unapproachable, aloof 

Girl 

About town 

In black leather thigh boots 

And hot pants, 

And loose fitting, wide-collar knit sweater, 

Who’s yanked off the sidewalk as part of a curbside abduction 

Recorded on video camera, the scene 

A continuous, shakily handheld and wide-angle digital shot 

That dissolves to the same 

Woman but later 

And dressed in professional business attire: 

Hair and makeup impeccable; 

Perched on a stool at a broadcaster's desk but absent a modesty panel 

That would otherwise be 

Silk-screened with fake logo, call letters. 

Her skirt hiked around waist, her splayed-open legs clad in 

Nude, ripped-to-shreds hose, 

Strappy heels 

Resting hooked in the lower rung 

Of a swivel stool, 

A man, crouched between gaping thighs, 

Studies eye-level white satin crotch tight against sex and wet-streaked, 

Grabs her waist, works her hips 

Back and forth, 

Helping to center her on the edge of the seat. 

The back of his hand lightly slaps her inner thigh:  wider! Wider! 

As she tries to read 

News about 

Train delays, a pacific storm 

Making land, 

And her mic picks up 

Motor noise in a plastic case, buzzing 

Muffled by vulva flesh. 

Asymmetric centripetal force nets 

The centrifugal force; 

Hi-speed rotation of counterweight mass on a needle-like shaft 

Rattles 

Housing that's dripping her 

Squirting ejaculate into a smokey non-porous glass 

Bowl 

The customer’s holding 

In front of a jackpot machine spitting 

Brass tokens. Bells ringing, red light on top spinning, 

She remembers her childhood: 

She was 

Writing poems. 

She was drawing castles. 

Thinks He touched me, but the way he touched me 

Behind the house— 

There were two trees— 

We sat beneath— 

We sat 

Under plane trees, 

Each under our own tree, 

The first time. 

“A couple of days later she tried to do it again.” 

You must find someone else 

Because you're making me do things I've never done. 

Coming out 

Of their separate weaves, 

Coming out 

Of their separate 

Perpendicular paths, 

Coming on 

At the same time, 

Warp and weft, 

As gentle nomadic sensations, 

Surface, then circle obliquely erogenous zones, 

Case from beyond 

The uneven perimeters cleared by Victorian 

Sex researchers 

At work on behalf of the leisure class. 

Furtive examples of curious fauna that burrow through undergrowth, 

Hints of arousal affect trepidation and feint before 

Zeroing in to depict topographically pitches of hillsides and headlands and peaks of sensation. 

Boundaries outlined, the sensory data from nerves— 

Drawn up, absorbed by the 

Stiff fabric 

Half in and half out of 

The clear glass 

Bowl 

On the counter— 

Advance 

To thethick, wrinkled hem 

Binding 

As a bluff overlooking 

The breadth of a vastness, Formica. 

Incoherent…tumultuous… 

Whitecaps of over-elaborate stucco become more intense 

At the crossroads in moonlight 

Until the ornate 

Tidal 

Heave ebbs. 

Coming out of the break 

And punched, 

His defense firing back— 

A warning is issued, but to whom isn't clear: 

Two people, drunk, 

Driven 

Into each other, 

Neither one 

Butting heads, 

Both of them head-butted… 

Forced to admire the authority held 

And maintained by fascistic, compulsory pleasure, 

The man’s two 

People, the one that he is 

And the one that he's not, but could be, 

For the moment 

Forgetting he's two people 

Tortured by fetishists, sadists, and perverts, 

Repressed individuals acting on urges they never accept or acknowledge, 

Inflicting on others 

Acts denied in the social sovereignty: 

Banned desires, 

Censured thoughts. 

With debasement and lewdness 

Consigned to the twilit collective unconscious, 

Prohibited hideous outrage maintains a society's moral commandments, 

Preserves them intact. 

Why do I feel like I’m talking to bricks, 

Freshly baked, stacked in neat and enormous squares 

Under a bleaching sun, when I’m talking to you she asks herself out loud, 

And goes on, I can be by myself too, you know. 

To find out who you are 

He replies; 

Same as building something, 

You build yourself, 

And building yourself, see 

Yourself, 

Whether you want to or not. 

I mean, how could you not perceive the mind, 

When you create what's in the mind? 

“Speaking of which, I think I'm losing mine.” 

You are. Because 

Human end-organ development  

Differed from all other primates, the cognitive faculties 

Of the man and the woman allow them to consciously choose to revert to the bestial, debasing 

Themselves or each other—mechanically, practically, chemically— 

Choose to become 

Slaves to their fantasies, bogeymen, spooks 

That have gotten behind 

Man-to-man 

Zero 

Cover defense of the target, 

Narrow and cramped and not deep though this area is on approach, 

Absent approach penetration unchallenged, not challenged at all when he loses his footing 

In lies he has told himself over and over until he believes them, 

A divot of wrong-footed step in the soft brackish turf of his memory, that wet, tears: 

Salty, 

Sea air-infused, a memento 

Withers 

And leaves behind 

Nothing, 

The instant replayed to convince 

“Everyone,” 

Who is always already (him) 

Watching 

(Him watching) 

What's past is still present, still there, 

A particular nothingness 

Standing in 

For the long-playing 

Event 

In a medium shot, 

Which event he can never 

Recapture, release. 

The traumatic experience, 

The betrayal, abandonment, 

His whole world, 

Fossilized gouged-out and ripped-away pock 

To remind him of what he's repressed and denied to himself, which denial 

He no longer denies: 

All there is: 

Denial the only trace, 

Underlining the black hole in his mind 

As nothing that didn't happen replaces the nothing that did.

Mark Parsons' poems have been recently published or are forthcoming in A Thin Slice of Anxiety, The Lake, Peach, and Misery Tourism. He lives in Tokyo, Japan.  You ​can follow him on twitter at https://twitter.com/parsons_mfa