A_TAKE_ON_CONTROL & Spiked Icosahedron: Two Poems by Jay Marshall

Spiked Icosahedron

My pills, they taste of oven bread,

Oven bread and mayonnaise,

Bitter onions, bolognese,

And pepper,

Don’t be sour,

Be not sweet,

For my time has come,

My time has come indeed!

I ask people on the street to call me different names,

Jericho, Michael, Jessica, Clarence,

Sarah, Shilo, Malif, Craig,

I ask them to call me anything, to satisfy my anarchic need.

To be identifiably unidentifiable,

It tastes like my pills.

My heart needs no time signature

(no time signature indeed),

Crimson, sanguine, needs no caption,

I speak to clarify, but never to explain,

I exist to work, but never to slave,

I take my pills, and live for myself.

And so, a poem from my inner child, for posterity:

In therapy, I talk to a amicable woman from the conseling department. She wore white pearls on her neck, bright orange slip ons, and distinctly halloween-y scrubs. When she asks me how I feel, I tell her I tell her that I feel how I am supposed to. She frowns at that. She asks me what it is that I’m supposed to feel, and I tell her that its whatever the person I’m talking to seems to think I’m supposed to feel. Right now I’m supposed to be okay, and so I’m okay. She tried to assure me that I can feel how I want in this space. She seemed annoyed, so I decided to feel bad.

A cruel little bastard, my inner child,

She knows her shapes, but not her objects.

He can’t recognize the Spiked Icosahedron that we’ve become.

But I can, I can, I can,

I’m not the greedy, malignant twerp that I am,

so I need not anyone to prick themselves upon my limbs.

---

A TAKE ON CONTROL: Make

What A

You Cruel

Will Summer

Of A

Tired Hot

Ge ||

N er Day

Ation ||

Unaffected by the arguments of man,

And kids I'm

Ridiculous

In Election and

The Was Lefta

Strangest Rigged Fayda-

Way Today Way

Breaking Bread With

Your

Old Mother

Conceptions || You

Of Would Should

What Make. Visit

Art Her

Is Sometimes.

And so things continue on, like the next page in a book,

If it wasn’t bad enough that things are going so badly,

The world itself is fal li n

g

.

.

.

To p i e c e s?

Well, I didn’t want to be the one to say it.

Nothing to be embarrassed about.

Who did you vote for?

The complacent one

Which one?

The one who keeps it under wraps

Oh.

So which one is that?

I myself think it’s obvious

Well, it's good that it's so easy for you to put together.

Tell me. Who said that?

Is My Voice

Different from my Voice

Different from my voice?

And if so, how come I'm the only one talking?

Just be patient with your mother, okay? She’s really trying her best,

Of course, unless you don’t want to be patient with her. That’s okay too.

She was always strict with you,

So hard to please yesterday,

But she's trying so hard now,

Do you feel that this is how we should treat the government?

Is it really that easy to forget the torrid past?

So far, the answer has been a resounding no, nada.

Should it be a no?

What is governance? What is a poem?



Mom says that a poem is a passage with strict rhyme and meter,

Is that true?

0o0 <-  This is a poem. -uo <-  This is not a poem.

^ This is a distinction ^ This is not a distinction.

Below,

You might find an ending,

A true enough statement,

For apparently a poem "must" end but I disagree,

or at least, this poem hasn't ended yet

---

These Poems were by Jay "Japes" Marshall.

Jay "Japes" Marshall is a freelance writer who is always excited to write in a new genre when given the opportunity. Beyond writing, they love to write music, painfully analyze game design, and roll down flights of stairs wearing clown costumes.

You can find them @Jaypegistired on twitter and @Jaypegig on Instagram.

Thankyou for reading!