The Disclaimers by Salvatore Difalco

 

Blooshed by Erich Ferdinand from Flickr

People with tiny souls controlled the peace.
“We are professionally rational,” they argued.

War is irrational in some respects.
As is art.

And yet we practice it,
flicking blood around like paint

or flicking paint around like blood.
Some of us, the catatonic, watch these goings on

with muted interest. “You catching flies, Joe?”
Joe shuts his mouth with a clack.

The real thing is more than word association.
No fake blood on set, the director

forbade it. He visited an abattoir.
That’s why he smells of excrement.

Let’s go on a date
with another kind of animal.

This one’s into pharmacology.
Later, we trip balls.

But the commingle mutually
disturbs and thus is hauled off to the archives.

In another life
chivalry will return and piccolo trumpets will blow

when you spill onto the podium
dreading a natural death.

Everyone is guilty of something here.
Their beetle brows and overbites don’t go

over nicely with the Guineveres of the kingdom.
An ideal situation would make us fear

the asylum escapees, rather than embrace them,
though yes, we live not far from the asylum.  

*****

Sicilian Canadian poet Salvatore Difalco lives up in Toronto, Canada.