“Priceless” Effectively Means Something Is of Great Value, But Only If Someone Is Willing to Pay the Exorbitant Price That You’re Oh So Reluctant to Put on Whatever You’re Selling

2.  Mask

Simian features and contours
Maintained under
High pressure gas contents,
Foam latex
Bony browridge shelf
Over eyes,
Spheroid-shaped jaws
Of the face-puppet mouth protrude;
Maxillary trajectory
Mimics chimpanzee prognathic morphology,
Canopies forward,
Projecting incisors set off by the
Large white canines as jaws open wide, baring
Weaponized teeth
Lining an orbit that’s empty and screaming
Its blindness in glistening pink
Outrage
To the skittish trills and demented coos
Of a sleazy 70s
No-budget
Z-movie
Waking nightmare of
Ticket punched, take the ride
Psychogenic fugue, electronic score
By a dark, withdrawn,
Gently humanist
Brian Wilson on Stylophone,
Or a pressure sensitive
Music Easel with stylus pen,
Harmonizing plaintive and mournful
Over the right triangle-shaped picket fence
Sawtooth wave
Low bandwidth sound pulse:  the force-sensing
Ribbon controller allows the musician to skipper the drone on tempestuous seas,
And to wield a tremendous nostalgic fascistic authority
Over designer tonality, and permits audible changes enacted in real time:
Artisan specialist timbre shepherded, combed with filters
On heaving swells, through a thousand chops, monophonic growl of the under-sound
Treated to heavy distortion.
Fight or flight
Response immanent,
Rhodes piano bass (played
Left-handed)
Imitates menace of
Animal heartbeat increasing.
Closing in,
Zombie meatmen appraise and spin
Brian Wilson’s enormous body, suspended from
Dull, stainless-steel S of butcher’s hook,
In the end, holding him steady to feed a youthful and earnest,
Ravenous
For his shot at the champ
Blue collar straight man, Sylvester Stallone
(Who was Frazier’s white stand-in)
Heavy bag
Body blow
Practice in meat-packing freezer; breath condensation,
As ragged and fraying-edged
Hoary puffs,
Dissipates quickly.
Frozen ribs
Streaked with fat
Crunch under wrapped knuckles.
The grim reality
Flower power conferred
In its teeny bop,
Bubble gum pop music wake 
Takes hold;
Psychedelic chickens—come home to roost,
Dayglow plumage in dark light—
Scratch and peck
LSD 
Streaked and flecked
Beaks,
Nails and spurs,
Carving inscrutable runes
In the dirt
Of the barnyard
Subconscious mind at night.
Speed- and lust-fueled teenage symphonies
Old enough
To know better men
Overproduced, an epiphany
Coming too late
To the victim:  a sharp
Intake
Of cold walk-in
Freezer air.
The two-cycle oil rich exhaust stings;
He tastes fulsome
Matte charcoal grey dank
Like damp gentle tongue probe
Of first kiss:  rainbow sheen
Jerked and bounced,
Pitched and heaved on the leaden lake
Water chop, where the jet skis carve moments, white
Furrowed arcs, open cuts
Quickly closed
Under overcast Labor Day
Low-ceiling sky he remembers from
Post-adolescence of childhood—but whose?
Burnished to silvery
Spatulate,
Narrow elongate paraboloid
Tongues, the guide bars of chainsaws
Lick at the air without interest
Like lizards distractedly
Tasting the freon
And anguish, despair of the man
There condemned.
The full chisel square corner
Left cutter, drive link, to right cutter,
Drive link array
Blurs to black fur around curved
Edges of sniffing prehensile probosces encircling
The trunk of magnanimous sixties
Free love and good will
To consider the prospect of binding,
The wood
Soft, but somehow…
Responsive, reactive to injury,
Casual slights and dismissive behavior
Transformed
Into
Bulletin board
Motivational fodder for anyone
Needing some.
Line cooks and prep cooks in garish red aprons,
Truck stop-style ball caps with backing of mesh and front panels of foam, and the visors
Pulled down to shield thought- and emotion-betrayal of eyes
And crows’ feet—
Feelings’
Tiny tells—
Stand around.
 
“Priceless” Effectively Means Something Is of Great Value, But Only If Someone Is Willing to Pay the Exorbitant Price That You’re Oh So Reluctant to Put on Whatever You’re Selling

3.  Salesmanship…The Guest…Re-writes
 
Skin taut and numb,
Tingly, plastic surgery rictal grin
Settles in on his public face
Riven with wrinkles devoid of emotion like mud
Dried and plotted with cracks.
Guest chair obliquely aligned with the host,
The guest is total professional, watches his latest performance
Through grey tint of lead glass:  in character,
Make-up, on his knees in despair, clutching and pounding his head
Exoskeleton,
Overinflated air-bladders
Limiting cervical flexion, rotation,
His face cast up at the sky and his frictionless palms
Clapped over audio speakers
Transmitting instructions for blocking and lines
The assistant director hypnotically—gently and rhythmically—burbles,
His lips a mere inch from the pop shield
In order to furnish an intimate, vocalist-trying to deep-throat-the-microphone sound
But self-consciously turning away
So to minimize thumping of aspirant plosives
That otherwise batter the cardioid microphone diaphragm,
Ruin the head-job illusion delivered through
Pop screen mesh, cuing the actor it’s time to emote:
Agony:  analog system of animatronics, controlled by a veteran
Children’s show puppeteer,
Animates infinitesimal muscles of mask
To provide a complete range
Of the most
Fluid emotion, expression.
The cheeks wrung
Between vacuum-formed hands,
Deep nasolabial creasing of furrows pronounced,
Facial features scrunch, 
Clustered together, the bogeyman
Viewed through a lens demonstrating severe
Spherical aberration;
A thick bundle of wires and cords, like braids
Laced with bright, colored yarn, trails out from under the headpiece
And runs down his back to the floor and unravels,
Like offshoots that branch at the mouth of a river, or lateral roots
That enlarge in diameter:  surface roots
To support the trunk and explore the soil; sinker roots
That drop straight as plumb
Finger and gouge the foundation below the sound stage
To stir it invisibly,
Under the cover of business as usual,
Roiling and heaving the floor with the first, imperceptible
Turns round the tap root,
Rotations escaping the notice of all but the most hyper-vigilant
Crew members,
Post-traumatic survivors
Of childhood- or family-type trauma or—
Even much later
(For women)—domestic or sexual violence,
Support crew
Getting to watch the display
Of their special effects technological might
(There’s no CGI on this
One)
(Every effect is mechanical)
(Made an exception for bluescreen—the ending isn’t grand guignol,
It’s an apocalypse)
Seeing the spectacle, the sole benefit
Work in the industry offers the folks at the bottom.
Through an open cupola,
Slumping over
The armored turret,
The stillborn screenwriter—
Birthed by midwives
Who went to New Critic schools—
Hard to penetrate
Sloping glacis
With pointed prow
Armor plate
Will diffuse the energy
RPGs
With shaped-charges make
(Thickness constant, the pitch increased
To approximate ideal form
Of the self-reflexive ironic pose
That is single sheet
Or hot rolled homogenous hull material
[Extra-solid construction helps to withstand explosive
Reactive tiles
Lining exterior; final effect
Of deflect, deform,
Ricochet);
Vented shrouds
Of machine gun barrels
From globes of gun ports like doll eyes
Blast
Ashen plumes, orange
Minarets, as the Other’s mysterious gaze,
Leading the object of wrathful, transcendent desire, destination—or target?—
However, unknown and unknowable,
Calculated along
The last
Known trajectory.
Muscular contours of body
Stocking elastic mesh,
Netting woven with styrene beads
To support and shape
The full-body alien suit or prosthesis
Absent the major convenience of ultra-absorbency liner
For urine recycling connected to flexible stem of accordion-crimped sippy straw,
Outline a gesture,
An image that looses itself from appearance,
Slithers free of its context, the plot, for the Nielsen ratings bonanza
Studio audience
Lucky few.
Malcontent millionaire actor
Turned-villainous cultural mastermind bent on destruction
Of globalized popular culture
Hegemony,
Same as he helped to create,
Doing
The talkshow
Pedigree pooch circuit
Says there’s no basis for culture of lasting importance
And somehow avoiding enormous presumptions continues, “Slung around,
Totally meaningless,” his exact
Phrase,
Said by way of indicting his own manifesto, or
Subtext his shoddy, unprincipled body of work has established in words
His detractors and critics have uttered aloud in their cups
Academically, cups unaffordable working as adjunct professors at state schools.
How much contempt can you stand? Mr. Congenial,
Insufferably
Polite (or “white”)
Late-night talk show host asks
Rhetorically, teasing the segment to follow,
Signaling cut to commercial so
Everyone watching at home can consider his comments,
Infer what’s implied for themselves,
That societal currents of trauma account for an uptick
In sexual violence in media.
How did you know I was going to say
What I was going to say?
Asked by proxy, a fetish carved
Out of teak, out-of-teak
Woodwork come, stain resistant
Above the fray
To observe and mock;
Masturbation image or father figure
No more, but rather
A soon-to-be
Never was, never had
Talent hack
Getting involved
In the issue dividing the minds of his day.
 
Some Ur-Shower


Certain times and places I’m able to urinate
only if my hand is pressed palm-flat against a solid surface,
like a wall or door, or the partition of a stall,
or holding on to something, like a towel rod, even hanging off the edge
of a sill or jamb or counter, each digit curved
and arched and filled with tension, like spines of housecats that feel threatened,
or the weathered tongs of a grappling hook,
so the weight of my arm
pulls and drives my fingers fast into the surface,
irrespective of the texture, thus making me feel grounded on some instinctive
primal level.
My bladder isn’t shy, it’s suffering
from the twenty-first century disease of feeling disembodied,
immaterial, like every other organ in my body.

Certain thoughts I’m able to think only if the room is pitch-black,
devoid of even the least bit of ambient light,
and my head is in contact with a rough, abrasive surface
I can visualize in granular detail by pressing my head against it
and rolling back and forth like the freshly-inked bulb of a suspect’s finger
on a fingerprint card, careful not to apply
too much or too little pressure
as I wheel my head from one side to the other,
and thus develop a clear, precise mental image of the texture of the wall
the details of the surface I created in my mind
conforming to the details of the wall as I objectively know them to be.

If, for instance,
the patch of unfinished plaster, or spackling,
over my dresser, off to one side and level with my head—a crease, a nick
in the shape of an isosceles triangle—if those
physical details correspond
to the image my brain composes based
on information sent by the nerve endings on my scalp,
then potentially
I

can have a certain thought.
If, however,
the defining features of the rough patch
can’t be discerned using the data from my nerve endings
where my head touches the rough patch—
even, for instance,
if the cause of the discrepancy
between
what I know to be true,
and what my nerve endings are telling me,
has nothing to do with
either my nerve endings, or the patch
of unfinished plaster:
such
would be the case
if the absence of verifiable conformation
results
from a change in temperature
or humidity, like the changes preceding a summer shower—
then,
in order to think a certain thought,
I must either:  find a spot on another part of my head—perhaps
there was too much hair
on the back of my head, while my chin, just
recently shaved,
today,
as a matter of fact,
the nerve endings on my chin
will be up
to the task of relaying tactile
sense
data sufficient to the job
of my brain reproducing from the data sent
a model of the rough patch
in
as many physical details
as my naked eye can discern, an exact copy… or
I must find another place,
or something else against which I can place my head
and proceed with the business of thinking a certain thought, a thought
perhaps unknown to me at the time I first consider
the possibility
of seeking out conditions
conducive
to thinking a certain thought,
namely,
the appropriate
surface
and the appropriate lighting:
seeking the thought with the relish unique to
someone stumbling over furniture
in the darkness of a stranger’s bedroom as I feel along the walls.
 

Mark Parsons' poems have been recently published or are forthcoming in A Thin Slice of Anxiety, The Lake, Peach, and Misery Tourism. He lives in Tokyo, Japan.  You ​can follow him on twitter at https://twitter.com/parsons_mfa