Interspection
How well we’d read our many roles
If heads were clear as goldfish-bowls
Like a crystal ball we’d view them,
Or read the Sunday papers through them
What’s more, without our skull to hide,
We’d see the thoughts that form inside
And view, as beer-froth in a cup,
Each quip and quibble rising up:
The scarlet cloud of waxing wrath,
Or reason’s neat mathematic path,
The plumes of wit. The lightning of
blind faith. The nebulae of love.
The little crystal memories,
That float like snowflakes on the breeze
That gently blows within the mind
And rustles leaves called Cruel and Kind.
The theater of thought would be
More entertaining than TV
We’d gather just to sit and drink
And watch each other as we think.
Desert Kite
These endless shifting sands—
They’re always changing hands,
But you can’t make bricks without breaking a little hay.
With oil the streets are pavèd;
Since Solomon and David,
They draft a brand-new atlas every day.
The apostles! The epistles!
And the fossil fuels and missiles—
Like manna in the wilderness they fall!
The land of Abrahamics
Now hosts General Dynamics
With their guardian angels gliding over all.
Daniel W. Galef writes everything from poetry (The Lyric, Measure) to humor (National Lampoon, American Bystander) to short fiction (Sein und Werden, Kugelmass) to VERY short fiction (Nanoism, Seven by Twenty). He has also written scientific columns, sketch comedy, fortune cookies, crossword puzzles, and a musical play, The Original, which premiered in March at the Montreal Players’ Theatre. He is fresh from a four-year tour at McGill University, where he wrote for twenty-six different student publications, was the editor of the humor magazine The Plumber’s Faucet, and won the Krivy Award for Excellence in Playwriting. Next on his bucket list is either television or a jokebook.