Maurice Oliver

Maurice Oliver
mo97232@yahoo.com

Maurice Oliver spent almost a decade working as a freelance photographer in Europe. Then, in 1995, he made a lifelong dream reality by traveling around the world for eight months, recording his experiences in a journal instead of photographs. And so began his desire to be a poet. His poetry has appeared in The Potomac Journal, Circle Magazine, Bullfight Review, Tryst3 Journal, The MAG, Eye-Shot, The Surface, One Forty Two Magazine, Word Riot, Retort Magazine (Australia), Taj Mahal Review (India), Stride Magazine (UK), & online at ink-mag.com, friggmagazine.com, dash30dash.com & tmpoetry.com. He lives in Portland, Oregon where he is a tutor.

"PRECEDING A RUMBLE EXTRAORDINARY..."

in swagger anointed awesome pesto pinprick
could pronounce pucker-up doll
between canine teeth but better pro-active
unless the cherry kissing
shame lamb mild mutant melody in stage props
painted bright lime or exposed
to a lab rat outhouse of pre-amp first prize
ringing prissy ears quick or
gut gills or a manual might help on the fresh
seedling ripe ribbon wrapped
schizo present to stud an eyebrow or brown nose
a puppy pillow out to drip-dry
until gotcha dish cloth is erotically squeezed
into a silo calf humble in painted
boxer shorts your rat resume then splatter rented
nimbus all over behaving weird with
a stutter to the goose step & if so you may want
to consult your physician

"PROBABLY SOMETHING SHARP" SONNET

Wearing wingtips like you mean
business.Diving into a fountain
full of coins. A boom box that
prefers the classics. Math that
uses numbers living in exile.
Size matters says the billboard.
A garbageman sporting briefcase.
The depth of unknowing. A ceiling
under oath. Puking for pleasure.
Creatures that peel. Some tangerine
toast. A bite of strawberry sole.
Trusting the complete honesty of
handcuffs. A pork flack-jacket. A
low-income toenail. Next time try
a common cold in the powdered form.
Bark that sheds. A bimbo freezer.
Anger gets sorry. Ragtime checks in
to rehab. The secret fraternity of
zippers. Smear testicles. World
perks that don't expire. A special
promotion for the dying. Or virtual
living for a better suicide.

"SPIN DOCTOR Vs. FOUND GUILTY"

Blood wanted to be a nurse's uniform.

So on the night in question
it became orphan floodlit or
inflicted-injury down the length of a necklace
on stilts stalking his girlfriend's sister
of double derby queer cute at-a-glance
ignoring the warning of Cheetah chance
in sheer bug spray a guy with a butcher knife
slipped sliced stuffed it up the hole
to squeeze squirt spill in spongy approach
mumbling could you be my savior
or a frightened blouse fogged or fluorescent
in acoustics according to the backpacker's manual
or did he lick a dish in theory
wearing a hippie fringe in a vernacular nosedive
or was the mugger a Basque
who don't believe in wasting good mascara
or a full fiber sample in spandex wooden limbs
plus motive equals bugaloo down Broadway
or try break dancing pass the turkey breast
because either way
it could never butter your coffee.

"WITH NIGHT GROWING LEGS"

First, everybody gets lost playing hide & seek.

A billboard off the side of the freeway of an eagle
with an enormous beak. A wide-mouth jar or knife
swallower. A view from the rumble seat. Maybe magic
mushrooms or a dense forest with three wishes. "My
caress is likely inspired by a lighthouse", she
says, as she winks at the ceiling mirrors. "Yes,
and I bet your brook can just as easily be an
estuary", I reply, pretending to be a reed. The
sky lies still so the horse can hoof it...

recalling that someone once said the pit of a
cherry is like the inside of a tackle box: all
hooks and sharp edges meant to snare.

(a husband who returns home to find a burning
cigar in the ashtray, knowing he doesn't smoke)

So summer, in a demon kick-back dumbo.
The strange car in the driveway.

Do disco lights have a lesser meaning in small
towns where the door locks are never changed?

Or mobbed by a glove compartment until then the
thin, finally ending up in someone else's future.

"A THIRD-EYE OF HINDSIGHT"

--A calculated jab at life, wearing handcuffs.

--The whole day spent fighting a fire with ice cubes.

--A place where the self-righteous can spit.

--The number of lightblubs needed to change the world.

--Going to sleep to see if you snore.

--An opera preformed in mime.

--A gun digitally programed to self-aim.

--Reasons flesh-tone band-aids need to get real.

--Offer her your seat and she'll squat.

--Simple worded, there are no words.

"Dissembling The Assembling Night..."

or it may begin as the curve in a bow tie sky mostly infected with brown teeth or in a ripple of grass along the ridge in a coyote or some stitched lesion of thick lower lip and a double chin with wind blowing the curtains of Oregon did rain in blossoms up and down emerald valleys with heavy seeds of cones hanging from the petting zoo or maybe with the singular intention of showing that the reincarnation of the sometimes here sometimes there has existed all along in a police protection program of tight toast on savory tangerine screaming like a male hummingbird until it unlocks its vivid voodoo of sunset couplets with a little post-jungle trot completely absorbed in itself while I sit sipping a warm mug of chocolate as if I were a face from a crowd scene of a Rembrandt painting all purple haze halter-top canvas and parakeets in a room with a floor to ceiling window that looks out on the bundle of a new frontier trying half-heartedly not to nod off in the soft spotted wings of my high-backed butterfly chair.

"A Stiff Robotic Self, Impeccably Designed"

In Act Two the playwright skillfully warps the details of life until:

-An abyss starts a travel agency specializing in tours of mini-parasites.

-Silence takes a heavy crowbar to a rare set of antique porcelain.

-The kitchen sink lay sleepless for the 4th night in a row.

-A bare pygmy shrub scratches its head then barks like a dog.

-A universe of cardinal sins are smeared on a museum display case.

-Peace at a distance begins a journal then turns at the jetty's end.

-A late-model ayatollah becomes a vehicle for polka-dot aliens.

-Lush Picasso-ville purchases the Cubist in us with a $200 rebate.

-A movie about the world is aired where everything happens in reverse.

-Even the existential fog eventually ends up as breathless valley voices.

"So Like You.Ever Predictable.Angel-Butch."

Just remember,
no one ever considered the power of change
to be great enough to become twin towers with a preference
for redheads. Or that the story would be so predictable
it would float. Or that the by-line of diplomacy would speak with a lisp. That the forecast of bad memories would be dressed to kill
or even held tight against a forever to come. Spilling out like a liquid
necklace with the jewels ordinary cut glass.
Or perhaps just the romantic passage of an assassin's bullet
in the middle of a Caribbean cruise.
Tangerine toast. Tar graves. Galoshes that have never
felt water. Either way,
we'll hold this fat ledger of the future
up high enough in the air that the world
can see its faults, or at least until the freight train passes
or the shaman can return
with a fistful of the scared calf's heart.

"Seems Perfect, Doesn't It?"

It all begins when she offers her soul to the highest bidder.

Well, young girls really, none any older than 19. Blush of
skin. Scent of sandalwood. Full lips on the mouth of the earth.
Or maybe it could turn out to be fresh flowers sent to a hotel
room. A subway token that escapes into the nearby gutter.
"From this angle I have a better view of giddy & uproarious",
she says, after the first stiff of zero-sum imagining. "Yeah,
and the bird flu in no two snow flakes are suppose to be
alike, but tell me who'd take the time to check", I reply, with
my umpteenth personal story waiting to be denounced...

feathers crowded with crows...
corn dense enough to broom stick.

A tangle of children's bicycles.
A stack of baseball trading cards.

A book of pages dipped in the idealism of ash.
Tracing the raw finger of a violet scar. Really?
Is that the surprise ending? Funny, I thought even
if the story runs out of dialog the sky would eventually
darken and night become just another bedside table.

"Heavy Drapes.Empty Glasses.A Camera Panning."

Or next time try an Italian hillside town layed-back in the Sunday morning of an earthquake ripple that has its faults or an ordinary constellation of spinal tap exhibition presently living under federal protection with a set of exquisite legs but too much sash idolized in a Raphael painting about cocktail leather holster or maybe even pleasing but my thoughts still sometimes wander to the anthropoid in rare Baroque poise braced in the jagged mirror of reflection allowing just enough time to see the mutate with albino eyes turn out to be the flashing lights of a guardrail at a train-crossing that would offer a much better cheap thrill actually and all you have to do is rub it first.