Outside

OUTSIDE

YesterdayI did a foolish thing.
I ventured outside,
and stood on the edge of the Infinite,
beyond the massive Sea of Wrecked Cars,
many of which I could not recognize,
their icons not even
in the Great Books.
It was a glittering web of chrome chunks
hanging limply
from high towers of rusted steel.

To my amazement,
midst the mangled machines,
hidden from the watcher drones,
I found
a forgotten field,
a dewey glen teaming
with parasites;
and it sickened me.

A noisy stream slashed through
its clovered center;
strange clear water
bubbling and rushing over rocks,
with cold things squirming in it.

I straddled it like a Colossus
and pissed.
It clouded up wonderfully
and became almost tolerable.

Standing in one quiet corner of the field
was the strangest thing of all;
a kind of scarecrow
lashed to a stump.

A man of straw
wearing something non-synthetic;
apparel that had partially disintegrated.
And from behind his shoulders of straw,
from within the stump's blackened charr,
a young apple tree had sprouted,
had grown up,
all around him;
and it held him tenderly
upright,
and somehow
their stamian caresses
had bore fruit.
Plump yellow apples hung
from her hair.

Angry,
I ate one of their children,
and crushed the rest
beneath my steel boots.
Their soft little bodies
crunched and cracked,
and my soles glistened
with their golden pulp.

Suddenly,
as we had been warned,
the sun fled from the sky,
and you know
how I hate and fear
the darkness.

So I had little choice.
I ripped out the man's straw chest
and I burned him
all the way back to the South Gates.

Later,
I was told
to never venture forth again.
I never shall.

Outside is
a foul and disgusting place,
full of shadows and sadness.
Now, more than ever,
I really do not understand
why so many men
have fought and died
for the right to go there.


Glenn Buttkus 1978

I had not read Richard Brautigan yet in 1978, but somehow I think he would have dug this poem; if he had had a chance to read it before his untimely death. It was written kind of in his style, part Science Fiction and part whimsey and part politics.