BEASTLY BUT BEAUTIFUL (flash fiction(?))

The assignment was to place Huckleberry Finn in modern day New York and write a short story.  I was a high school kid in the 80s and only spent a few field trips in New York.  Of course, I watched many TV shows and I did have my imagination. 

Mr. V didn’t cotton to me.  I was a dirty, wrong side of the tracks kid and he was a GQ preppie.  I figured I would just go balls to the wall on my yarn.  I set the tale in Harlem and had Huck running into prostitutes and drag queens and trying two kinds of Mary Jane (One a plant and one a Ho for the naïve among us.)

I turned in a completely uncensored tale fully expecting to be failed and possibly sent to the principal’s office.  I skipped school for fear of repercussion.  Then I learned that Mr. V loved my story and read it out loud for the entire class.  He had to censor spots due to complaints of two classmates.

I returned to class greeted with a smile from the first fan of my literary stylings.  The class discussed my story.  Mr. V managed to use the word beastly twice in a 45 minute period.  I did take it as a badge of honor—as he was talking about my poetry and fiction. Ït’s beastly but beautiful.”  They say don’t judge a book by its cover and I think 2 people learned a lesson that week.

https://www.postpoems.org/authors/georgeschaefer/prose/1100548

ANOTHER MISCONNECTION

I could not find you,

     my dear

You were hiding behind

Cleopatra’s Needle in Central Park

     and I, um—

I was looking for you

along Belmont Plateau

in Fairmount Park in Philly

And my vision not

being bionic or X-ray

was unable to detect

     your presence

or lack thereof

https://www.postpoems.org/authors/fuche_bu/poem/1074085

THRU PERIPHERAL VISION: Schaefer, George F: 9798790939471: Amazon.com: Books

YOU CAN LIE TO ME

You can lie to me.  That’s okay.  I’ll probably figure it out and no one will really get hurt.  But you keep lying to yourself and that’s really an emotional and psychic cancer.  But like a portrait of Dorian Gray in the attic, you’ll keep the deterioration hidden from view.  You know the cancer is spreading but it isn’t visible so you can smile and I can pretend. And the pain and the depression continues and it deepens.  You refuse the surgery that can remove the tumor.  And the lies just get deeper but you’re only really fooling yourself and maybe some mindless social media followers who don’t care about your soul.

You can lie to me

but if you lie to yourself

the disease will spread

eating away the spirit

your internal organs first

Cannibalized Haibun: Schaefer, George: 9798416456573: Amazon.com: Books

https://www.postpoems.org/authors/fuche_bu/prose/1083264

JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT IT WAS SAFE TO DO POETRY AGAIN

I saw the best minds of my generation 

destroyed by blandness

MTV spoken word tour; sewn up vaginas;

dismembered penises, poetry slams

featuring dickless, cuntless verse

spewed by genderless eunuchs

all in the name of advancing pop culture

for lamebrained, gutless pansies

trying to rap out poems

to the underage audiences

running around pretending it’s deep

yeah, Henry Rollins,

16 year olds think you’re deep

but we falsify the nature of the beast

mindless infidels, staggering drunks

The feasts that were promise 

were never delivered by corporate—

yes, corporate MTV execs

pathetically trying to be hip

& failing miserably in the effort;

Timid poets pointing a finger at me

while I raise the finger at them;

All the yuppified, glorified culture

Jim Morrison wannabees and white boys

trying to rap like wiggas

without a clue about riddum

and the ever so sensitive—

ever so sensitive political correctness;

worrying about Bill and Hillary

or trying to eliminate sexuality

It’s all a crock of shit to me

Don’t have an alcoholic drink

make it water with a lemon twist

Try to create a giant rubber room

out of this glorious planet

so our Volvo’s and Saabs

can run freely in peaced

hide inside petty rhetoric

allow tv producers to think for us—

can’t actually expect us

to actually think for ourselves

figure out how not to offend

while pretending to be radical poets

those people cutting into my scheme;

but don’t think I don’t know it

only I admit it up front

that it’s 90% art, 10% pretense

or maybe the other way around

I just cling to my insanity

but it slips through my fingers

It, like sand beaches, is eroding

I am falling prey to the plague

but I try not to be defeated

try not to be like everyone else

It is a desperate, lonely plight

but not without its charms

as I keep the candle lit

and burn passionately through the night

determined to escape the fate

of albatrosses & other fallen angels

https://www.postpoems.org/authors/fuche_bu/poem/1082993

5-7-95

CHOKE THE CHICKEN (AUTO-EROTIC ASPHYXIATION GONE HORRIBLY WRONG)

They found him

in a room in Thailand—

pants down, belt around neck

big smile on his face.

The prostitute in the room

sobbing and swearing

it was an accident.

Auto erotic asphyxiation

gone horribly wrong.

And then there are suicidal tendencies

and people hanging themselves.

But families lose the Ka-ching

if it’s suicide

so now we have lawsuits

claiming deceased loved ones

were really just perverts—

No intent to die

Just intent to cum

Auto erotic asphyxiation 

gone horribly wrong

But maybe we’re taking

our idioms and adages too far.

Maybe we need 

to drop “choke the chicken”

and bring back “spank the monkey”

There will still be

a lot of redness and swelling

but at least you’ll live

to recount your shame.

https://www.postpoems.org/authors/fuche_bu/poem/1071061

IRIDESCENT JEWELS

Iridescent jewels lay buried

deep within the soul

waiting to be excavated.

I struggle for

the pure stream of consciousness

as twisted ideas

rampage through my mind.

I recklessly splatter

and sprinkle words

across the page 

in mock rhythmic cadence.

It’s been suggested

in some circles

 that I am a poet.

https://www.postpoems.org/authors/fuche_bu/poem/1066478

JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT IT WAS SAFE TO DO POETRY AGAIN: Schaefer, George: 9798449725561: Amazon.com: Books