Scream!

It is better to scream than to be screamed at,
So go ahead and scream!

Scream for every kernel on every ear of corn in every cornfield in Iowa.
Scream for a time when gold doubloons are no longer necessary for the short-term rental of a phosphorescent tree house in a virgin wood.
Scream for all the catatonic pilgrims on the road to nowhere.

Scream for Christopher Marlowe. 
Scream for Philip Marlowe. 
Scream for the amoebae, the protozoa, the paramecia.
Scream for all the juke joints in all the emergency rooms of all the papier-mâché palaces.
Scream for the glen plaid-clad elocutionists who come knocking at your door. 

Scream for all the dead pet turtles flushed down the toilets of New York City by indifferent children of the sixties.
Scream for the plumbers.
Scream for the right to whimper.
Scream for brushes, and bobby pins, and carburetors, and noodles.
Scream for the sad, abandoned clam diggers.
Scream for the wall-eyed pike, because if you don’t, who will?
Scream for an end to calcified beginnings.
And scream for those who’d rather you didn’t.

Just get out there,
Open your mouth as wide as you dare,
And scream!

Peter Cherches’ next collection, Things, a mix of prose and poetry, will be published by Bamboo Dart Press in April. He has published widely since 1977 and boycotts all journals that charge submission fees.

Peter Cherches’ new short prose collection Whistler’s Mother’s Son, available now!