CAPGAS Poetry

Borrowing from the tactics of early 20th Century Surrealists, the following is the result of a variation of Exquisite Corpse, in which one writes the opposite of the previous previous without seeing the phrase before that. Authors: Kerry, Dana, Rick, Kiran, Natalie, Theo, Mike, and Melissa.

One child sits alone and stares.
All adults stand together blindly.
No children site alone all-seeing.
In their twilight years, they stood together, blind as bats.
As babes, they sat far apart, like farsighted eagles.
Aged now, their love had made them one, separated only by their separate beating bodies.
I am alone.
You are loved.

Someone once asked me what is was like on my planet; I simply shrugged and said, “round.”
I’ve never been questioned about the shape of your world, but I would reckon it to be cubic.
They constantly demand to know the formless, immaterial void that you don’t imagine as round.
We are in one circle, asking for nothing, knowing that something exists here.
You are alone, rejecting everything, ignorant to the nothing which dies in other lands.
Together, embracing all, knowing all, we are born home.
Apart, abandoned, an empty mind died far from its birth.
LIVE MY GLORIOUS BRAIN!

After contemplating for ten years, I ask no questions.

I haven’t considered much, but I have many things to say.

I’ve thought much about it, but I can’t find the words.

Mind empty, it’s the words that come clearly now.

My heart is full yet I am mute.

I sing with an empty head.

She speaks of great ideas.

He mumbles of monosyllabic images.

Reason and morality shall bring you to heaven.

I am a libertine, I act according to smells, and I go nowhere.

I am everywhere, yet the world offers me nothing and I am drawn to the inappropriate.

The world opens up to me like a cornucopia, but I am nowhere and dream of the most mundane things.

It’s the small places that close their doors to me now, everywhere and close my eyes to an emptiness behind my eyes where the entire world lies.

Nothing is open to me, I am dying behind the moon.

As you grow in the sun all is closed to you.

I languish in my bedroom.

Under my wriggling toes mushes the sweet, soft, curdled earth.

Above my head slushes the rancid earth.

Beneath my buttocks solidifies the delicious industry.

Strapped to your head is a jug of rancid invention.

Emanating from your toes is a loose stream of pleasant plagiarism.

Held firm in your head is a fastened ocean of horrible originality.

Dropped loose at your foot is a free desert of serendipitous mimicry.

Raised and bounded, far from your hands isn’t an ocean of purposeful originality.

Crawling on the floor, I have on my fingertips a tab of whimsy.

Striding tall across the sky, you feel your stomach fill with anguish.

Small steps beneath the ground, you’re numb to the joy draining away.

Is it late at night or early in the morning?

It’s midday and midnight here.

It’s a nighttime lunch over there.

It’s not all daytime dining in here.

Yes- the day dwellers drink over there.

Never here have the dark died from dehydration!

Always there, the light was born from infinite streams.

Never there, the dark died running down short waterfalls.

There now, always, the light was born, standing up, distant from stagnant ice.

Then- make it never- a dark infinity hovered close to running water.

Far from burning sands, the brief explosion of light now shines for eternity.

The frothy beer is refreshing.

The coke is flat and warm.

The sedatives are like a million tiny frozen, stabbing knives.

The cocaine soothes me like a bathtub of warm pudding.

The oxygen aches in me but is nothing like a desert of cold salt.

The carbon dioxide suffocates me like hot chutney.

Silicone hydrogen allows me to breathe in cold blandness.

The uranium behind the real breasts keeps me from breathing in warm excitement.

The dynamite above her fake ass makes me breathe cold and slow.

The liquid that would never set fire, lay beneath his truth, and it allows you to exhale hot and quickly.

A flammable fiber rose tall, amid lies, preventing me from sucking coolly and slowly.

Sometimes all the wind is asking is for you to lean back.

Often none of the wind beckons you near.

It’s not any of the raindrops that send me away.

Hark! The desert keeps her at home!

Pay no attention to the rainforest that he never returns to.

Stay alert to changes in the desert and always return.

Ignore tedium in the overgrown forest, journey forever on you path . . .

Embrace minutia on the lawn, stay home, never on track.

The earth moves and yet I feel nothing.

You feel Venus stand still.

Serena runs past me.

Aneres stands with me.

Serena sits with you, now!

Activity rides away from me, before!

Lethargy keeps you here after the storm.

I leave this place quickly in anticipation of the drought.

I arrive here in slow apathy of the flood.

You left in the short-lived concern of the drought.

I lay! Outside the long dead, disregard for the rain.

Die, you fucker, die! I kill you! I fucking kill you!!

I live! I’m a beautiful creature who elides all pain! You will hug me!

I die. You aren’t many ugly existences that envelop no agony! I will never avoid you!

You live! I am one beautiful moment that is inside pain! You will never find me!

I perish? You are the million horrible hours that revolve around joy . . . I will someday loose you.

Celestial prophecies be damned, it really was all about the big bang.

The secular writings are praised, but nobody cares about the end of all things.

The crowd spits at the devout orator, and all creatures love the beginning.

An individual sucks far from the passive operatic without a single being who hates the ending.

All spit close to the active silence with all who love the beginning.

I feel most complete at home in a bath, but I certainly love people.

I get lost when I go swimming, but I probably hate people.

Finding my way when walking the land, with definite clarity I love everyone.

Are you lost, confused, and hate filled?

Find me sure and dense with love.

You are hiding because of hatred.

Your love is not the cause of your obscurity.

My hate makes you famous.

Friendship is the manifestation of drug-addled dreams.

Enemies aren’t the absence of sober awakenings.

Comrades are present in delirious dreams.

Mundane reality, empty of enemies.

Excitable dreams, full of kin.

Boring plots, scare with strangers.

Exciting settings, seduce me without familiar people.

Dull vacations make me long for a paramour.

You rejected the unwanted advances of another during a raucous day at work.

I gave in to the desired cold shoulder of someone after the tedium of home.

I repelled the unwanted attention of all those people beyond the chaos of the city.

I stood on the deck and stared out at the savage ocean.

He floated in the calm water and heard the shore.

Sinking beneath the waves, her heartbeat was the only sound.

Flying out of the sea, she could hear everything but her heart.

Diving into the desert sand, he was numb to all.

Swimming in the ocean, she felt every pore of her body.

Flying, airborne, he was completely numb.

The ground arrived quickly.

The glass is half empty.

The sand is half full.

The ocean is completely empty.

The desert teems with life.

The atmosphere is dead.

She wears leather pants and a fur coat.

He’s naked in human skin and a transparent nothing.

She wears bones and clouded everything.

Undressed down to her heart she was clear and open to nothing at all.

Everything closed around his opaque form, swathing his head in majestic garments.

When I was a child I wanted to be a fighter pilot but my eyesight prevented it.

As an adult, I feared a peaceful passenger whom I could see well.

She is a confident girl, sitting next to a stranger, closing her eyes.

Absolutely insecure, she stood far from her best friends, wide eyed.

Improbably confident, he sat with heavy lids and embraced his friends.

Insecurities about and with her eyes wide open she turned her back to everything.

He confidently grasped all.

Nervously, she let go of everything.

“Just who do you think you are, coming in here and telling me who my daughter should marry.”
She is somebody special, leaving that place and singing about a son who is alone in the world.

He was nobody, coming here as a mime, conveying the idea of a daughter surrounded by emptiness.

Someone left forgetting the concept of his son surrounded.

With complete clarity, no one’s daughter was abandoned.

Confusedly, everyone’s son was picked up.

Certainly, no one’s daughter is laying down.

I stand up tall, clearly.

The small frog leapt to safety.

The mutant bullfrog froze in danger.

The prodigal prince awakened in peace.

Chaotic violence swarmed the slumbering, neglected pauper.

Controlled safety of the bees, awake with attention to the woman.

Freedom of the dangerous flies sleep, oblivious of the man.

Shackled by nice reptiles, you are awake and very aware of the looming gaggle of children.

Unchained by malicious animals, you sleep and dream, unaware of the distant wise crone hidden between the mountaintop.

Tied with the kinds reptile, I wake and realize, aware of the foolish you man at my side in this valley.

Falling asleep, energized by the cruelty of warm-blooded life, you lose sight of the old woman, that genius, who climbs the mountain unaided.

The door is open.

All avenues are closed.

Some streets are open.

All the alley-ways closed their doors.

One wall will open its window.

Two frames will collapse away from the fountain.

One photograph develops on the rooftop.

Many dreams evaporate within the depths.

No eventualities condense outside the shallows.

Every inconceivable notion expands within these depths.

One knowing stalemate, shrinks outside of those distant mountains.

The tiny baby entered this world crying in confusion.

The giant died as he laughed knowingly.

Sobbing uncontrollably, the ant lives!

Tears are not shed for the dying giant.

Joy is a gift for the immortal one.

Pain is a bill from the deadly mass.

Joy isn’t a guarantee within a community.

Individuals promise misery.

A group denies happiness.

A loner admits deep sorrow.

A social-butterfly denies the lightest hope . . .

Now we are here, bound by blood and booze, warmed throughout with kinship.

Then I was there, moving through death and life, cold in my loneliness.

Suddenly gone, still in life and death, hot in your company.

Slowly present, she vaporizes alone and cold.

Suddenly invisible, he appeared in the fire, standing with the entire family.

Already visible, she disappeared in the water, without her parents.

Basking in familial love she vanished and returned to the air.

Alone in the world, he appeared then left in the water.

With friends from outer-space, he disappeared and arrived on land.

I live with strangers for eternity here on this earth, in water.

Dying without familiarity for finally I’m released into the stars, into the sand, into the desert of darkness.

CAPGAS Cinema and Parlor Game Association of Seattle

CAPGAS
Cinema and Parlor Game Association of Seattle