#477 Surrealism is Dead: A Prose Poem

Surrealism is Dead

It died right alongside Irony in the second and third decades of the 21st century. We tried to revive it. We administered the CPR. We kept the airway free. We turned it on its side so it wouldn’t choke on its own vomit. Finally, it gave up the ghost. Now, we look around and listen and wonder what could possibly be weirder than this. Everything has become so strange that ultimately nothing is.

That being said.

I’ve had it up to here with reality.

If you look too long at the moon your head will explode.

One day a man’s hair caught fire after everyone kept insisting upon it.

Free will is an illusion. So is expensive will.

You cannot put coffee in a fountain pen. I’ve tried it.

Finally, I sat on a bench in the rain for hours, until the floods came, and the bench became unmoored and floated away with me still astride, my legs dangling in the water, tempting the sharks who were in town on unrelated business, hungry and needing a distraction, who, luckily, decided finally that my legs were not worth eating, not thick enough, not bloody enough, too hairy. I continued to float on that bench without a paddle, preparing as best I could for the ultimate drowning.