National Poetry Month Day Thirty

Prompt:  Artist Max Ernst was one of the pioneers of the Dada and Surrealism movements.  Be inspired by some of his painting titles (use the titles directly in your poem, in  part, or just be inspired in a surreal way): the fireside angel, eye of silence, birth of a galaxy, everyone here speaks Latin, murdering airplane, the wavering woman, two children are threatened by a nightingale, dream and revolution, totem and taboo.

Eliot Phone Home
Two Children Are Threatened by a Nightingale

As long as old men sit and talk about the weather

Measuring out their life in wind speed and temperature

As long as old women in the room
Come and go talking about old men

I’ve had this overwhelming question.

I lift and drop the question on my plate

Like a wavering woman

Do I dare? And Do I dare

Disturb the Birth of a Galaxy?

And how should I begin?

I grow old… I grow old…

And I won’t come back from the dead

To answer...

If heat rises, then shouldn't hell be cold?

And if hell is cold

Then Mars ain’t the kind of place to send your kids

And there’s no one there to raise them if you did

Here it’s just my job eight days a week.

And now where’s their Dada?

They’re burnin’ up my shoes with aerosol.

Yes, there will be time to murder and create.

Before the taking of tea and toast.