Very Bad Archive
On Trying to Comprehend the Inner and Outer Complexities of Unicorns
Tyler Vendetti
Once upon a time in a land
filled with scary trees
with branches like webs of cob
down yonder
I began to ponder
what it would feel like
to be a unicorn
whose emotions are swirled together
like bubble gum pink cotton candy or my aunt Kathleen’s hair
on a humid day
into a cylindrical party hat without strings or colorful designs
poking the air with the anguish of a thousand suns.
Horse mixed with an overturned ice cream cone
of stone cold alienation
is what you are, I’m sure of it.
Like, 98 percent sure, almost as sure as the time when my 1st grade teacher asked me what two plus two was and I told her four because I had written it on my hand when she had mentioned the answer in class earlier that day.
But the marker was smudged,
which is where the 2 percent comes from
so I can’t say I’m positive.
Maybe you’re just a horse with an
identity crisis.
Maybe that’s why you don’t speak
to anyone but those dew-soaked strands of grass
dancing back and forth, forth and back
forth forth, back back
and forth again, like tribal savages clutching their own midsummer night dreams
in fields of rye dyed green.
Homo sapiens conjecture the validity of your existence
but I am cognizant of your occupancy on this luminous planetoid
masked by herbs and valleys of liquid dihydrogen monoxide.
Somewhere beyond the sunrise induced sorbet colored sky
I imagine your stripe-less zebra fur, wild and untrimmed
like Tarzan
flickering madly like wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tube men in the zealous dog day breeze.
My senses, clairvoyant, ghosthunters not for ghosts, but for knowledge
have slithered through the mounds of non-believers
like soap on a slip and slide sitting on a slanted hill
and have accepted your existence.
Evaded the world, you have,
avoided the vanilla twilight descending.
Perhaps you are part vampire, shying away in a mystical forest palace
from others who would stare with judgmental corneas,
irises, retinas, pupils,
layered optics sunken into pockets of flesh.
If this be so, unicorn, I’ve come to coax you into the light
because if what they say is true
the sun will make you sparkle
and everybody loves glitter.
Tyler Vendetti has published since joining on 30/11/99. Read more of Tyler's terrible poetry at the anthology. Here are three of Tyler's latest works: