Size / / /

If surreal people were the world

our landscapes would

reflect the inconstancy

of our unconscious condition.

The evolution of flora and fawning

would have learned nothing

from Darwin.

Our bodies would undergo

countless transformations

from the grotesque to the sublime.

We would sleep dreamlessly,

our thoughts and desires at rest,

to wake each morning to a reality

framed by random association.

Worlds of metaphoric explosion

and grotesque hyperbole

would expose

startling revelations

lost in the moment

of their comprehension.

We would confront time

and its liquid ticking

in a petrified railway station,

and exalt in the

creation of gods and goddesses

of geometric exactitude

while burning herbivores

strolled across a lean horizon.

If surreal people were the world,

the wonders and horrors of existence

would forever begin anew.




Bruce Boston is the author of forty-seven books and chapbooks, including the novels The Guardener's Tale and Stained Glass Rain. His writing has received the Bram Stoker Award, a Pushcart Prize, the Asimov's Readers Award, and the Grand Master Award of the Science Fiction Poetry Association. You can read more about him at www.bruceboston.com and see some of his previous work in our archives.
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4 Nov 2024

“Did you know,” the witch says, “that a witch has no heart of her own?”
Outsiders, Off-worlders {how quickly one carves out a corner of the cosmos, / claims a singular celestial body as [o u r s] in the scope of infinity}
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