Joe Balaz


TELL ME ABOUT IT




UNEXPECTED FINS AND SCALES


I’m heading
to the Church of Never-ending Doubt

to play bingo.

Maybe I’ll get lucky

with the seemingly 
random numbers.


Actually
all good fortune 

is on a grid of gravity

in tandem
with a beam of light

that is expanding faster
than the edge of the universe.


That’s what I think anyway

so I’m going to wish
for a bright portion of that light

and the calling out
of digits that are positive.


I have a special fondness
for the number 22.


I wouldn’t mind
being 22 again

but alas

unless science
finds a back door

that I can slide into
to visit my youth

I’ll just smile 
with remembrance

if that number
is verbalized

to fill out my card.


I’m sitting on
an uncomfortable pew though

because a faceless
nonentity 

with a monotone voice

continues
to announce numbers

that are evasive rabbits
drawn from a small black hat.


Hopping somewhere else
to someone else’s 

shout of “bingo”

is beginning
to try my patience.


I think I’ll leave
and grab my fishing pole.

A change of activity
might alter my relativity.


I’ll see what I can catch

in the pond
of unexpected  fins and scales.




STARING INTO HIS MORNING COFFEE                                                                                


Round helium fantasies
were rising to the full moon

while Neil Armstrong

ate his cheese burrito
and stepped on a lunar crack

breaking his mother’s back.


She was unhappy in traction
but laughed at the reaction

when her doctor slipped
on a banana peel

as all the preceding balloons
continued to float in the scenario.


In the air there too
drifting along in a stratified haze

was a vibrant double helix

winding and binding like Felix
that wonderful, wonderful cat,

with mischief twirling in his paws.


The double helix was inside
a big blue blimp

as Felix chased a rat with a limp
up and down a spiral staircase.


Inflated condoms
blown in by a hot wind

suddenly joined the aerial parade

and dipped and swayed
like a cloud of blackbirds

forming a big amoeba in the sky.


Behind the changing silver lining

a yellow dirigible
full of musical crickets

navigated the popular airwaves

while singing a bulldog song
above a sea of green.


Out on the waiting horizon

beyond the wandering mass
of elevated absurdity

a giant pen
reached up into the atmosphere

and began popping
all of the passing floatables

like it was bursting soap bubbles.


Ernie thought of all of this
staring into his morning coffee

before he headed to class
on his first day of creative writing

unsure and wondering
if he could come up with something.   

Joe Balaz writes in American English and in Hawaiian Islands Pidgin (HIP). He is a writer, visual artist, and freelance improv musician, who has created works in poetry, visual poetry, and music poetry. Balaz has been published nationally and internationally. He is the author of Pidgin Eye, a book of poetry, and he is also the editor of 13 Miles from Cleveland, an online literary, art, and music magazine. Balaz presently lives in Cleveland, Ohio.

 
 

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