Adam Fieled

from Opera Bufa

#41


             I have made a habit of courting buffoons. I have listened to a British waitress ask me, would you like a scone or a buffoon? I have eaten scones and buffoons together, with cheese and cherry preserves. I have felt that scones and buffoons are somehow related, especially where Tennyson is concerned. I have felt Tennyson to be both a scone and a buffoon. I am ready (finally) to eat a scone alone. I no longer need buffoons in my life. I have covered Freebird for the last time. I am ready to be free. I am ready to cherry.


#37


             There is backwards masking mixed into the mix tape I sent you. Satan himself says he is himself but you need a turntable to hear it. The experience of hearing Satan’s voice backwards may be absorptive for you. It was for me. I immediately fornicated with three high priestesses. I did a line of cocaine off a shag carpet, put on an Andy Gibb tee shirt, and wandered around looking for Snow Caps. I became possessed by a demon and I rose off the bed. I astral projected into the kitchen and my head was a Necco wafer.


#38


             I was a cadaver in a copse until a cop arrested me. I was a convict in a jumpsuit until I jumped bail. I was a hitchhiker under galactic moon dust until I saw the sun. I was the sun as it rose and I shone on my dead self. I was a copse under the sun. I was a convict and a copse. I was all of this until I learned that you are what you see. I was what I saw until I saw that my eyes were shut. I opened my eyes to a kind of vacancy. I opened my arms to delinquency. I do not see anything now, and it rings.


#40


             I was playing a lute in the Court of Ferdinand. I was being courtly. I was displaying all the sprezzatura that I could. I did not reckon that it was actually 2007. I remained strangely unaware that electricity had been discovered. I picked up a daffodil; it became a cell phone. I picked up a quill; it became a bottle of Nyquil. I realized that I was in the wrong century. I would have to live through hundreds of years to get to where I was. I would have to spontaneously regenerate. I saw my lute become a Stratocaster. I saw the court become the Bowery Ballroom. I only knew two scales, and I played them every which way. I heard deafening applause. I saw Ferdinand wearing Speedos.


#17


             I don’t know who my friends want. I could be a French-speaking gopher. I could grope every freckle on a red-head’s behind. I could fickle myself in plaster or plastic. Of the many possibilities, I feel closest to mother’s voices please-touching; concretes, red-brick wings, soaring up through Baudelaire’s tendonitis. I ache with him.



Adam Fieled's Opera Bufa will be published by Otoliths later this year.

 
 
 
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