A Catalogue of Serious Oddballs & Oddball Clowns

A Catalogue of

Serious Oddballs

And Resentful Clowns

 

The Following Poems, Written in 2016,

Comprise a Medley of Characters

That Betray the Strange Ethos

Of the Coastal Community

Of the Carolinas

 

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-THE FERRYMAN-^[1]

 

And the ferryman sings in the swagger of the sun

And he shouts, and he sings till the loading is done

 

And he stands like a steeple till the people come aboard;

Then, he shouts to his bosun, and he sings to the Lord

 

And he shouts to the old men, fishing on the pier

And he sings to the seagulls of the broad Cape Fear

 

And he shouts to the cold waves, slapping on the prow;

Then, he sings every blessing that the rules allow.

 

 

-THE BESPECTICULED VIPER-

 

An Observation About the Relationship

 Between Senseless Hatred and Pointless Vanity

 

Now, with my back turned to Confection Corner

And waiting for the light to change on Church Street,

I could gather myself and figure out what just happened

I had felt the eyes of hatred and didn't know why exactly

But a clerk had been watching me as if I were a feral cat,

Looking for a place to dig among her darling flowers

So, I asked her how much for the marbled fudge �"

The one in the little box with the glittery ribbon

"Twelve dollars a half-pound," she hissed,

Eating me alive through the glare

Of her crummy red glasses -

And I muttered,

 

‘It must be very special fudge'

And smirked to think of how

She made it out of gold!

 

She hated me

The moment

 

That she saw me,

And I hated her

For hating me

 

That moment,

 

Finding my best outrage

And leaving without fudge.

 

-THE EVIL PARK KING-

 

A Flippant Conjecture About the Nature of Divine Mercy,

Or The Story of a Guy Who Was impossible to Like

 

No one knew why they called him, “Doc”

But he didn’t come across like a doctor

 

He had a devious-looking face, and he wore

The same suspiciously stained shorts

To the park all summer

 

He’d sit there, with his gigantic head thrust forward,

Mocking the pigeons, - And occasionally,

He’d get up and try to kick them

 

He thought they were “dirty little s***s,”

 

And he wanted God to know

How he felt about them

 

One day, Doc stopped coming to the park

Because he got sick and died of cancer,

And he couldn’t be mean anymore

 

So, some pigeons hopped up

On the bench where Doc used to sit

And casually befouled the throne,

 

Not even acknowledging the significance

Of a villainous king’s inevitable demise

 

Still, no one can say for certain if Doc was sent to hell,

Even though the pigeons gave a s**t about him

Only in the way they actually did.

 

 

 

-THE PECULIAR ANGEL-

 

Or, To Be of One Mind  

With a Woman of Madness

While Seeing Different Things

 

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She threw small handfuls

Of old popcorn in the air,

 

Watching the birds flutter briefly

Before they descended on the food

 

Then, she pretended to scold them,

 

As if they were the most

Favored of her children

 

Or the most charming

Of available demons.

 

She noticed me watching her one day,

And grinned, assuming that I was

One with her in thought.

 

“These sons-of-b*****s

Are hungry,” she said.[2]

 

-THE BEACH CLOWN-

 

Today is a yellow day!

Yesterday was pink

Or maybe tangerine

 

But every day is nuanced in some way �"

The silver day that started out copper,

The copper day that ended in gold

 

But sometimes you get clumsy with your palette

Because you try to avoid stepping on a dead jellyfish,

Only to splatter your precious colors at the comely feet

Of better balanced and far more less awkward people

 

And that makes it a fall day,

 

When you can’t comfortably laugh at yourself

Because you have a bad attitude toward

 

Your role as an agent of comic relief -

Now, and maybe for the rest of your life!

 

But today is a yellow day,

Very much like my first day �"

And again, on my birthday,

And the day afterward

 

I love yellow days because I am free to laugh at myself

And the unexpected ways I find to play my part in things.

 

Therefore: I am the low one of the sea -

And God should not much bother me.

 

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[1] The poet said that the ferryman is an amalgam of several individuals, but that he is mostly based on an older guy who worked on the ferry that went up the Cape Fear River from Southport to the aquarium in Fort Fisher. Paris compared him to a “priest, blessing things,” one who “seemed to have no function on the ferry other than that.

 

[2] "The Peculiar Angel” says much about the poet’s feelings of isolation and his desire to connect with others. Again, Paris was a personalist who did not philosophize from a detached perspective, but from desperation to understand why he seemed to be at the center of the existential paradigm. Even as a child, he believed that everything he experienced was about him and concluded that without him, nothing would exist. (See also, “Primarium Opus.”)