January 23, 2025: "The Forms," Surrealism, "Fried Egg on the Plate without the Plate"

So, I'm getting a little social media weary.  Too many posts that piss me off and make me sad.  Had to take a break today.  I'm sure all kinds of weird shit happened in Washington, D. C., but I just had to stop scrolling and reading.

There's an old hospital building that's being demolished right now in Marquette, Michigan.  My son was born there.  I had my appendix removed there.  I worked for a little while in the O.R. there.  Every day, I've been driving by the site, watching the structure looking more and more like the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma after Timothy McVeigh.

I am surrounded by the surreal.

Sharon Olds on all the forms of love . . .

The Forms

by: Sharon Olds

I always had the feeling my mother would
die for us, jump into a fire
to pull us out, her hair burning like
a halo, jump into water, her white
body going down and turning slowly,
the astronaut whose hose is cut
falling
           into
                 blackness. She would have
covered us with her body, thrust her
breasts between our chests and the knife,
slipped us into her coat pocket
outside the showers. In disaster, an animal
mother, she would have died for us,

but in life as it was
she had to put herself
first.
She had to do whatever he
told her to do to the children, she had to
protect herself. In war, she would have
died for us, I tell you she would,
and I know: I am a student of war,
of gas ovens, smothering, knives,
drowning, burning, all the forms
in which I have experienced her love.

Olds is right.  Love can make people do wonderful and terrible things.  Look at the list of abuses at the end of the poem:  gas ovens, smothering, knives, drowning, and burning.  While her mother was focusing on protecting herself, she left her children to fend for themselves against their father's alcoholic angers.

That's the space that we're all in right now--dealing with our old, drunk uncle.  He's embarrassing, catering to the absolute worst of humanity.  Each day brings another unbelievable act of stupidity and/or recklessness from him.

Perhaps André Breton was right:  "The man who cannot visualize a horse galloping on a tomato is an idiot."  I've been seeing hippos galloping on tomatoes these last few days.

Saint Marty ventures into surrealism, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

On this day in 1989, Salvador Dali died at age eighty-four in Spain.  Write a poem with the title of one of Dali's paintings or use four of these titles from his words in a poem:  Self-Portrait in the Studio, The Artist's Father at Llane Beach, Coffee House Scene in Madrid, Fried Egg on the Plate without the Plate, Honey Is Sweeter Than Blood, Man with Unhealthy Complexion Listening to the Sound of the Sea, The Invisible Harp, West Side of the Isle of the Dead, A Couple with Their Heads Full of Clouds, Two Pieces of Bread, Expressing the Sentiment of Love, Cathedral of Thumbs, Soft Monster.

Fried Egg on the Plate Without the Plate

by: Martin Achatz

after Salvador Dali

An egg climbed up a string with no end because the sun looked like its mother.

The sun laughed as the egg lost its grip, sliding back down the string, again and again.

Finally, the egg cried out, Don't you love me anymore?

You're a joke I told a chicken once, the sun said.

Don't you see the family resemblance? The egg sighed like a rooster.

But by that time, breakfast was over, and the sun went for a swim in the lake.

The egg dangled on the string, weeping yolky tears.