Thursday, January 22, 2015

Hybrid



image borrowed from sadanduseless.com


Hybrid

“Naked cells, lacking self-respect, do not seem to have any
sense of self, & can divide into monstrous hybrid progeny.”
--Lewis Thomas.

No one completely
recalls their many fevered dreams, 
because what rises

to actual consciousness are just divers colorful random fragments, like
rogue strands of DNA--standing naked in line at Starbuck’s--being attacked
by three knife-wielding muggers & only having a red silk scarf to protect
yourself with--encountering a silverback grizzly in the aisle of Ace Hardware
while holding a yellow watering can--driving in a dead-stop traffic jam in a
typhoon in a vehicle that has no body, sitting on an orange bucket wearing
hand cuffs, steering with your knees--being chased by a pair of white tigers
& barely able to move in super slow-motion--being on some kind of
date with Scarlett Johansson, her wearing a see-through blouse, somehow
knowing you will wake up before you score with her--walking alone on the
desert & stumbling into a huge nest of rattlesnakes, stopping as several of
the larger ones slither over your bare feet--being tied with clothesline, bound
up in a cellar, the rope slathered with peanut butter, with rats chewing on
the knots--spiders the size of lap dogs crawling on the walls of your bathroom
--being at a holiday family gathering in a house you’ve never seen before, with
several of your dearly departed showing up, as if death was not a deterrent to
genuine love--riding a black Harley motorcycle at more than a hundred miles
per hour & realizing you have no brakes--driving a rental truck on the coast
highway with its hairpin turns in a lightning storm, as the truck slides out of
control, breaking through the wooden guard rail, & plunging a thousand feet
toward the angry sea--hooking a 220 pound bass in a strange pond, then
wrapping your legs around a stump to keep from being pulled into the brackish
water--arriving at a familiar theater, not being acknowledged by anyone, not
knowing what the play is, not knowing where the dressing room is, or what 
your part is, or what your lines are, as you can hear the audience laughing
at a play in progress--climbing the sheer rock face of the Devil’s Tower, free-
style & not feeling fear or vertigo--snowshoeing in the back country when you
hear the unmistakable roar of an avalanche, snapping trees, coming for you.

A million scenarios, absurd litanies, a lexicon of illogical tableaus & irregular
plots, a crazy quilt of emotions, adventures, fears, joys, heartbreaks, pinnacles,
near-death & after death experiences, conquests, failures, being lost, pain
& pleasure;

where you are 
the Star of your own
magnificently successful movie,

where
your fantasies
are satiated and
your nightmares blossom black,
like shadow roses
in your
secret garden.


Posted over at dVerse Poets MTB

Today Brian Miller wants us to take a classic poetic form & "make it your own".
My hybrid form is a Haibun, starting with a Collum Lune, followed by a prose
paragraph, followed by another Collum Lune, capped with a stanza of my
own imagining. 

Would you like to hear the author read this Hybrid Poem to you?


23 comments:

Claudia said...

wow... a lot of images here that i love... between dream and nightmare... the grizzly in the aisle or the harley - first i thought wow - i wanna ride a harley one day..but heck..no breaks and the whole picture looks different
well done sir

Mary said...

I do like the way you do Collum lunes, Glenn. Each of those could stand well on its own without the other components of the poem. I think each of them is vivid, makes a point. Perhaps, on occasion, 'less is more.'

Unknown said...

this poem is a hybrid BEAST. I'd never go to ace hardware again if I spotted a grizzly (although, I barely ever do in the 1st place - not a handy man; ha.) the snakes weren't so pleasing either... ouch

brudberg said...

Oh dear Glenn, what a foray into the nightmares and dreams you have, from Scarlett Johanson to rattlesnakes in an eyeblink if I had dreams like these I would probably not go to sleep.. I like your combo to combine the prose with micropoems as well.. very innovative.

Marina Sofia said...

Hybrid in name, hybrid in form and content - this suits you to a T, Glenn! Sounds like a duck-billed platypus to me.

Anonymous said...

Vivid as always, Glenn. Some of those dreams start off so well too ...

Beachanny said...

A hybrid dramatic surrealistic dreamfest supposing the American dream meets phantasmagorical nightmare. Wherein American forms interpret their formalist beginnings; where dream becomes more than landscape and art drips into technicolor reality.

Brian Miller said...

holy crap dude...you took multiple forms and put them in a blender....lol....surreal....my worse dream involved a chase in which I was finally caught...and turns out it was myself....you captured a lot of fears in there....

Gabriella said...

Creative hybrid that suits the content very well, Glenn. This fevered dream soon creates a fevered read. Very clever!

kanzensakura said...

Oh my.....nightmarish like a modern day Poe...thoughtful, fevered....and the collum line are excellent.

vivinfrance said...

And a wow from me. It's bedtime here, and I reckon your vivid writing will produce a nightmare!

Anonymous said...

A million scenarios, absurd litanies, a lexicon of illogical tableaus & irregular
plots, a crazy quilt of emotions, adventures, fears, joys, heartbreaks, pinnacles,
near-death & after death experiences, conquests, failures, being lost, pain
& pleasure;

Everyone of these... exactly right for dreams and nightmares... wonderful work

Grace said...

I like that you tried the haibun Glenn as you are very comfortable with prose ~ I admire the fragmented imagery running in the prose like nightmares of random dreams ~

Enjoyed your lunes too ~ Too make it more dramatic, contrast the imagery in the shorter forms or with a different topic than prose ~

Rosemary Nissen-Wade said...

Plus more than a touch of surrealism! Altogether a wonderful read.

Kathy Reed said...

I am not familiar with the form, but I have to say how I admire your ability to connect a wide range of images with provocative lines; a stream of nightmares..or maybe, could be the result of a little cannabis you had after dinner last night! When I have dreams like this it almost seems like I know I am dreaming them, but I can't control where the mind will go and what feelings might be conjured up. Far out, Glenn.

Misky said...

Oh my ... welcome to my nightmares!

Maude Lynn said...

This is dizzying, overwhelming, awesome!

Gail said...

Well broken but I'm still spinning

Anonymous said...

nice exploration of the irrationality of dreams! Like how your haibun started with a haiku instead of just ending that way.

Wolfsrosebud said...

so loved how you ended this...

Victoria said...

The way you've played with the forms along with the context makes this seem so stream-of-consciousness-like. Very cool weaving of forms, Glenn. I wish google would let me go back. There was one image that really struck me but a phone call interrupted this poor old lady's thought
process.

Mystic_Mom said...

Wow. Glad you don't breed crops or livestock - you'd create some really hard to manage hybrids, but in poetry you are a master my friend. This is amazing!

JodetteP said...

That prose paragraph in the center was absolutely captivating and stirring... oh my gosh if all these scary counts really did pop up one night I would totally lose it haha :D great imagery