Mauled by Ape Leaves

We have our cake and eat it too!

Then later, we watch a movie where poverty is
victimized by capital punishment in a car park.
There's a re-trial but it becomes paralyzed while

crooning a Perry Como of life's hard knocks. Poetry
is tenderly portrayed as having startling bravado
and everyone with a camera is either a tourist or a

voyeur. The whole town becomes partly cloudy with
intermittent light showers. Miles Davis is no cornet
player and there's a county-wide ordinance banning

the use of pink plastic flamingos as lawn decoration.
After the weekly pray meeting, stage fright seduces
the fiery sermon of a secular fundamentalist disguised

as round three. San Francisco wakes up with the Bay
Bridge in its bed and then belts out a dramatic
monologue about possible conspiracy theories. Thom

Gunn has a holster or a banana glad to see us. Life
is content to be intimidated by a colossal cleavage or
the same woman in the gorilla suit. And all the while,

the rabbi insists he has a reputation to accidentally
overdose. This movie really has the power to make
people mad. And I dare you to try and find the segue.

 

Maurice Oliver
Maurice Oliver worked in the 1980s as a freelance photographer in Europe. His collective poetry presented in this issue of WV? are based upon his 8-months of world travel in 1995, where he wrote his observations and experiences in a journal as an alternative to taking pictures. These records have evolved into what is his poetry. Here are three of these records...