the cosmic farmer’s fertilizer song

we were all anesthetized until we realized we were floating around on sugar boats, the sugar dissolved into a cold ocean swirl and we all fell in, baptized in some kind of cosmic kool-aid 

and the pain was real and the pain was right, and someone said “let there be light” someone flipped a switch and the world turned on

and it was all amusement parks and trailer parks and time clocks and argyle socks and artificially flavored pop-rocks and option stocks and noah’s arks, so we climbed aboard  

with curiosity we make a rudder, with imagination we make a sail, we discovered dry land and learned how to crash into it, we were happy landfill

it was a land of feral salad forks, it was a land of hubcaps, airplanes filled the sky like starlings migrating to heaven, people grew on trees and the kool-aid flowed like two percent milk

we sang gypsy blue jean rock-n-roll radio, we ate breakfast casserole, we goose-stepped in and out of combat boots, we glissaded up and down slippery slopes, it was a jubilee
 
of hyperbole, and all the people ate all the trees, we breathed our last breath of laughing gas and laughed ourselves to death, but it’s all good, it’s all understood

this world eats itself daily, it’s the cosmic farmer’s favorite song, hymnally of ecology, tidal waves wash our coffins back into the bigger picture, back into the sea, back into a bowl of milk

and sugar

posted for shay’s word garden

posted for d’verse open link

posted for poets and storytellers united

48 thoughts on “the cosmic farmer’s fertilizer song”

  1. Have you ever seen an obscure and magnificent little movie called “Northfork?” Your poem really puts me in mind of it. It’s about a small town by that name where the government is moving everyone out because the opening of a new dam is going to leave the area under water. There is a scene where all the coffins in the cemetery start bobbing up. The movie is full of odd, surreal things, like an angel with an array of eye pieces, Nick Nolte as a priest, James Woods as one of the government hacks, and includes a very strange sort of giraffe/dinosaur thing. I think you’d love it.

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  3. I love the internal rhyme and the tumbling chaos it presents for us to look at and recognize as the new order. As always, all your images are both surreal and totally normal and commonplace, just nudged into a different dimension. I especially liked “we discovered dry land and learned how to crash into it, we were happy landfill..” The piece is like the Little Golden Book of Manmade Disaster. There is really something chilling(and real as hell) about the glee with which the creatures in this–us–cavort over our plastic and meaningless destructive creations. Fine prose poetry which I can only wholeheartedly admire.

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  9. Wow, wow, wow is my first reaction. I felt my scalp tingling and my circulation quickening during the reading. You’ve created a world with all of the grit and blood and joy unapologetically intact. My favorite poem of yours so far, Phillip.

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  11. I love your poem, Phillip, and I dearly love your profile introduction. I’d love to sit on your front porch (f you have one) in quiet conversation.

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  13. My goodness this is absolutely GORGEOUS writing 😀 I especially like; “we glissaded up and down slippery slopes, it was a jubilee of hyperbole, and all the people ate all the trees.”

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  18. I enjoyed the surreal mood and imagery, the wild trip from line to line. I spent half my time thinking, I want to go there and the other half, “But I’ve been there too!”

    And the phrase “it was a land of feral salad forks” will stay with me for a very long time…

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  20. Is there another animal who eats themselves to death? We’ve taken our tastebuds and turned them into combines, threshing fields of glory to burst the silo. There’s a gnashing to this poem’s glissade, the forte of gashing forks which of course disturbs only a little the ongoing feast. All living things eat, for sure, it’s our duty, but no one else eats the baby from hat to booty.

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    1. “Is there another animal who eats themselves to death?”
      actually yes, all creatures are genetically predisposed to “eat themselves to death” sort of speak, to consume and reproduce exponentially, and it is the harsh realities of environment and predation that keeps them in check. example: a forest underbrush grows thick and full, attracts snow hares who will thrive on it, comsume and reproduce at an alarming rate, which attract predators, fox coyotes wolves etc, who in turn thrive on the snow hares, consume and reproduced, and so on until the forest is essentially “decimated” sort of speak, until the undergrowth regrows and the process starts over (nature is not teetertotter balance, it is unicycle balance) as humans we have stepped out of this cycle somewhat, we have eliminated most of our harsh realities, broken the natural balance, and the genetic call to “eat ourselves to death” runs wild. we have the capability to fix this, but so far have chosen not to. i am avid outdoorsman and in college i studied wildlife biology and i’m an observant human being, i’ve seen all of this first had

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  21. Woh! I want some of what you’re having, ha ha! A superb write, Phillip, a trippy rollercoaster and yet a very real cosmic message behind it. Too many good lines to quote. Just the sheer cascade of detail, really wonderful.

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  23. FASCINATING title and then WOW!
    I am most smitten with these words….the argyle socks most especially!
    “and it was all amusement parks and trailer parks and time clocks and argyle socks and artificially flavored pop-rocks and option stocks and noah’s arks, so we climbed aboard
    “

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  24. I love the musicality of this piece. It also makes me think that what is sweet isn’t always artificial, but it’s never a bad idea to ask yourself if it is. It’s hard to make compost out of the artificial.

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