Mungo
1)
Mungo invents a way of pulling down
the stars. He plays his crystal flute.
When the stars get close he lassoes
them quickly and puts them in his basket
where they glitz all night until
sadness makes them die.
2)
Mungo makes paper dragons
which spew fire from an internal combustion
box. He uses them in his lessons
on elementary passions and how
they affect their owners. It isn't
a sustainable business. After ten
lessons he runs out of dragons.
3)
Mungo designs bigger furry slippers
for bees as well as larger pockets
in their working overalls. When the bees
premiere his invention, their lift-off
capacity is seriously impaired
and only the pollen count soars.
4)
Mungo invents the sort of joke which holds on
to its own sides. Since it’s not supposed to laugh
at itself it shows its fangs and coils tightly
around the nearest laughing stock.
5)
Mungo mixes a medicinal compound
which heals all ills. At night, when
the rains come, his patients
experience a welcome absence
of symptoms and soon find
they are no longer under the weather.
6)
With the help of a 3D printer,
Mungo learned how to clone
those body parts of which
he was exceedingly fond. One day
his attention wandered and after
a few weeks he was all ears.
7)
Mungo sits in a tree, binoculars
at the ready and many green stalks
in his olive green hat. The tall tree stands
somewhat removed from a copse which stands
somewhat removed from farmer Beck’s field.
When the deer emerge, Mungo throws down
the towel and makes a fast buck.
8)
Mungo has written a tune which makes
you long for pumpkin soup when you
listen to it on an empty stomach. He calls
his group the G-spot five and tells an interviewer
that they haven’t yet found their place.
9)
Mungo designs a light-weight folding chair.
On the canvass seat he paints three flying geese,
one smaller than the other to indicate
depth and distance. When Mungo visits the lake
he takes the chair along, unfolds it, and eases himself
slowly down right next to it. Sitting on the lake’s muddy
bank he contemplates the beauty of his art.
10)
Mungo discovers the perfect disguise
for his pot-belly, a recent acquisition in the wake
of increasing and unexplicable appetites.
Instead of psychiatric sessions he tends
to slip into his comfortable sea-lion suit
and permits his friends to feed him sashimi
after permitting them to stroke
his seductive roundness.
11)
Mungo invents a time piece
that moves backward.
He is contemplating
the infinite, small black holes,
and whether one hand moving forward
would bring time to its inevitable end.
12)
Mungo writes an aroma sonata in praise
of smelly cheese. During the first
experimental performance, as his audience
silently leaves the concert hall, one
old man is left to fill his lungs
with the crescendo of the finale.
This experience convinces Mungo
that he has to change not form but content.
Henceforth his oevre contains only inspiring
forest floors, spring flowers and, his most
famous, the seventeen chocolate variations.
13)
Mungo writes a symphony for big noses.
The olfactory senses are entertained
by wild crescendos of Stilton
interspersed with pastoral moments
of woodruff and the odd adagio
in the key of B minor, discharging
bouquets of ragweed pollen to seduce
the public into participating. The oevre
is called the First Interactive
for nose organ and congested gullets.
14)
Mungo thinks it high time to counter
the threat of third parties reading his
emails, browsing his rubbish, or reconstructing
his digitally enhanced communications.
The evening sun entering Mungo’s study
finds him bending over his task. He wears
a black mask and writes by hand
in invisible ink (droplets of effort spray
dancing dust motes) on a very small paper
ten bullet points on how to obstruct
the efforts of the Martian secret service.
15)
Mungo invents a machine
which can inflate the moon.
Wherever two young people
park on lovers’ lanes, burglars
need illumination, the wayward
badger lost its way between
the ferns, or mothers contemplate
another thankless day,
Mungo’s machine will spring
A German-born UK national, Rose Mary Boehm lives and works in Lima, Peru. Author of two novels and a poetry collection published in 2011 in the UK, ‘TANGENTS’, her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in a good two dozen US poetry reviews as well as some print anthologies, and Diane Lockward’s The Crafty Poet. She won third price in in the 2009 Margaret Reid Poetry Contest for Traditional Verse (US), and has been a finalist in several GR contests, winning it in October 2014.
No comments:
Post a Comment