Four Poems - Mad Hatter's Review

Four Poems at Mad Hatter's Review
Published Spring 2012

Four Poems
by Alison Ross

When Basquiat Met Bosch

When Basquiat met Bosch, the two smeared castle walls with graffiti of sci-fi monsters fornicating in the Garden of Street Art Delights.

When Basquiat met Bosch, the two decorated the fortresses of hell with triptychs of crayola hieroglyphics. Tiny chimeras emerged from broken shells as the pair worked into a cloudless night reeling with tag-laden subway trains.

When Basquiat met Bosch, they played medieval jazz in cozy cafes where poets spouted rhymes about a vindictive god and the seven deadly sins. The revelers suppressed their carnal appetites and went home to their Brueghel towers underground.

When Basquiat met Bosch, Bosch spray-painted stick figures and skulls playing saxophones onto Brooklyn bridges while Basquiat scrawled Charlie Parker musical notes into parchment Bibles.

Basquiat died from an overdose of Hieronymous, and Bosch proclaimed, “SAMO is dead.”



¿ que es el surrealismo ?

it is not
what it is

it is
a knot

of obliterated zeroes

it is an escher painting spoken with a portuguese accent
it is portuguese painted with a disintegrating brush

it is a nuclear bomb that creates the world in seven days
it is eve tempting the apple to annihilate the serpent
who copulates with adam
under the tree of forbidden bibles

it is not a psychedelic rain
it is not a jihad of centipedes
it is not miro weeping on a bed of nails

it is
a knot of knots
disintegrated into portuguese
by annihilated serpents
in a psychedelic jihad

eso es el surrealismo



My Love

My love his eyes are ancient screams
his screams can see with ancient eyes

My love his lips exist only in theory
his theory proposes the existence of lips

My love his hands are sinister books
his books can read with sinister hands

My love his heart is a neon song
his song explodes into neon hearts



A Brief History of the Deconstruction of Time

The devil waves his magic wand and three miniature skeletons resting in an oversized coffin dance to life.

The skeletons leave the coffin in search of happiness. The first skeleton climbs a ladder made of smoke. The second skeleton jumps up a rope made of sleep. The third skeleton scales the coffin using his bare hands.

The first skeleton wants to keep climbing to the moon. The second skeleton desires to feel the rain on her face. The third skeleton aspires to attain equilibrium.

The first skeleton says to the second skeleton, “If you come with me, you can bathe in the tears from the moon.”

The second skeleton says to the third skeleton, “If you come with me, you can drink the tears from the moon.”

So the three skeletons climb the ladder of smoke all the way up to the moon. It takes them 666 hours divided by 2 with a square root of 3.

The first skeleton lies down on the moon to rest. The moon begins to cry quietly. The second skeleton bathes her face in the moon's weeping. The third skeleton imbibes a goblet of the moon's tears.

The moon, dried of her tears, dissolves into a cloud, and the skeletons fall back to earth.

The first skeleton’s bones splinter into tiny luminous globes. The second skeleton's bones melt into mist.

The third skeleton’s bones assemble themselves into a ladder that he scales in his sleep all the way up to the sky. There he meets the devil resting in a coffin made of clouds, waving his smoke-filled wand, as the moon dances back to life.