TATI’s & TONY’s DEAD POET TOUR // Out Of The Morning. by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

Will there really be a morning?
Is there such a thing as day?
Could I see it from the mountains
If I were as tall as they?

Has it feet like water-lilies?
Has it feathers like a bird?
Is it brought from famous countries
Of which I have never heard?

Oh, some scholar! Oh, some sailor!
Oh, some wise man from the skies!
Please to tell a little pilgrim
Where the place called morning lies!

by EMILY ELIZABETH DICKINSON (1830-1886)
Public Domain Poetry

lungfish

eyes of sand awash in a trench of tears
all i could do was sink & sift & wait
with crosscurrents of ancient memories

deserts flooded without, grain by grain
pupils flooded within, shard by shard
a tessellation of guarded hope

& i saw the turtles all the way down
& i saw the elephants falling asleep
thoughts of the flat disced earth beneath
felt soothing to my feet

i was a vision of tombs & flower voids
of dormant dolls raptured from the womb
of shallows, sunken barrows & undertows

yet above so below, steps & high walls
strewed worlds of cavernous possibility
all this in dim view of my timorous reach

& i saw the turtles all the way down
& i saw the elephants drowse in the deep
thoughts of the flat disced earth beneath
felt soothing to my feet

i breached into this world from deathless waters
& will dissolve in the chasm with time when i’m done
but for now let me take at least one lungful, if not the horizon

the longest voyage begins with the first stroke
then on to scurvied teeth & the bruises of experience
let the steady plash of oars be the sound of our freedom

by TETIANA ALEKSINA & TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2023

ABSURDIS EXTREME // Case Study #20,913,067 [12/12/2024] by B.A. Loney

Adam Ant was crawling along a Möbius strip in the hopes of bumping into August or Johann—you know, to get their autographs and maybe even a selfie. The other ants hadn’t the heart to tell Adam Ant that this was unlikely to happen as his two favourite German mathematicians were long dead.

It was an arduous journey, but Adam Ant didn’t falter. He wholeheartedly believed that every new turn brings a fresh hope, so he went ahead carrying a grain of sugar, his gift to the geniuses he would never find. (All geniuses have a sweet tooth, you know. Glucose nourishes the brain.)

While it goes without saying that he never reached his intended goal, it should go with saying that somebody else did reach him. You see, Eve Ant was crawling along the Möbius strip from the other direction. Some would call it fate that their paths crossed. Others would call it inevitable because what other direction was she going to go in? Well, maybe in the same direction as Adam Ant but then they never would have met at all. Or maybe inward but then neither of them were overly given to self reflection, what with being as shallow as an aquaphobic amoeba’s wading pool.

Anyway, encounter one another they did, and so Eve Ant immediately asked if there was a hotel nearby. You see, she was bone-tired (perhaps because her skeleton was on the outside and she’d been walking on it for so long) and just wanted a place to put her feet up for the night. Adam Ant wasn’t tired at all because he’d been rollerblading the whole way (oh, did we fail to mention this earlier?), but he did rather fancy the ampleness of Eve Ant’s abdomen so he thought he’d stick around to keep getting a sweet, sweet eyeful.

So, Adam Ant took Eve Ant by the elbow (like a real gentleman) and escorted her right to the door of a nearby hotel. He even helped lug her luggage (that’s how much he was impressed with her abdomen). And, what’s more, he payed for the most expensive room for one night, and was so classy that he didn’t sleep in the giant, luxury double bed with her. That’s right, Adam Ant slept out on the giant, luxury double couch instead. Naturally, Eve Ant was so impressed by all of this that she found herself wishing she hadn’t torn off her wings and become queen of another colony already.

But, truth be told, Eve Ant had absconded from her duties as breeder and matriarch months ago. There was so much more to life than popping out millions of eggs until she resembled a desiccated ball sack. She wanted to see the world! And perhaps Adam Ant was the one she could share this dream with. Perhaps he wouldn’t even mind so much that she was no longer a virgin (didn’t some men like older, more experienced women anyway?).

As it happened, Adam Ant was desperate to have Eve Ant stick around (so he could goggle at her abdomen some more), so he invited her to sit at the edge of the Möbius strip with him awhile. Eve Ant was giddy with delight, and they romantically dangled their legs, ate from Adam Ant’s grain of sugar, and gazed at the stars. Their compound eyes were full of love hearts for each other an—

Somebody sprinkled dichlorvos on them and they died.

by TETIANA ALEKSINA & TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2023

hana

needle always points
this way, not the other way
life, straight and simple

tapping glass facade
with a time-worn forefinger
for something has changed

north has gone astray
besotted with fragrant air
cherry blossom front

thread follows needle
pilgrims wander to the east
archipelago

by TETIANA ALEKSINA & TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2021

TATI’s & TONY’s DEAD POET TOUR // The Sailor-Boy by John Clare

Tis three years and a quarter since I left my own fireside
To go aboard a ship through love, and plough the ocean wide.
I crossed my native fields, where the scarlet poppies grew,
And the groundlark left his nest like a neighbour which I knew.

The pigeons from the dove cote cooed over the old lane,
The crow flocks from the oakwood went flopping oer the grain;
Like lots of dear old neighbours whom I shall see no more
They greeted me that morning I left the English shore.

The sun was just a-rising above the heath of furze,
And the shadows grow to giants; that bright ball never stirs:
There the shepherds lay with their dogs by their side,
And they started up and barked as my shadow they espied.

A maid of early morning twirled her mop upon the moor;
I wished her my farewell before she closed the door.
My friends I left behind me for other places new,
Crows and pigeons all were strangers as oer my head they flew.

Trees and bushes were all strangers, the hedges and the lanes,
The steeples and the houses and broad untrodden plains.
I passed the pretty milkmaid with her red and rosy face;
I knew not where I met her, I was strange to the place.

At last I saw the ocean, a pleasing sight to me:
I stood upon the shore of a mighty glorious sea.
The waves in easy motion went rolling on their way,
English colours were a-flying where the British squadron lay.

I left my honest parents, the church clock and the village;
I left the lads and lasses, the labour and the tillage;
To plough the briny ocean, which soon became my joy–
I sat and sang among the shrouds, a lonely sailor-boy.

by JOHN CLARE (1793-1864)
Public Domain Poetry