… and now for something completely different – Poems and musings by Zack Rogow

 

 

Idol Conjectures

 

What if we ate round tofu on the night of the full moon

What if everyone just refused to drive cars unless they ran on art nouveau solar panels

What if we responded to all work emails after 5 pm with a cake recipe or a movie suggestion What if

Robots started writing poetry and forming exclusive literary cliques for robot neosurrealism robot confessionalism

What if Elvis really is alive on the island of Elba about to claim he’s the rightful Emperor of the French wearing an outfit halfway between his spangled white jumpsuit and Napoleon’s dress uniform would you be a groupie for his Hundred Days concert tour till his final gig at Waterloo

What if they cloned Mozart and he decided to become a professional wrestler

What if all the animals are planning a bloody uprising masterminded by ostriches with Gothic moths as couriers

What if legislatures only drafted laws and the entire population voted yes or no online

What if national borders just gradually disintegrated from neglect

What if to be or not to be really were the question for our whole species

What if we launched all nukes into space in the direction of the Horsehead Nebula

What if there were another version of you that could stroll the Earth experiencing different things but fundamentally similar

What if there were a hundred of those beings

Billions of them

What if there already are

Zack Rogow

 

BUMPERSTICKERS

 

My other car is a 1930s platinum cigarette case

My other car is a MIDDLE-AGED muppet

My other car speaks Sanskrit WITH A HINT OF A POLISH ACCENT

My other car has a crush on your OTHER CAR

My other car played Hamlet IN COLLEGE

My other car is a chain smoker

My other car RUNS ON BIOdiesel poetry

My other car is Presocratic

My other car thinks IN ALGEBRA

My other car WAS AN Abstract Expressionist BUT NOT ANY MORE

My other car is an honor student at Cardinal Newman Middle School

MY OTHER CAR WOULD RATHER BE SURFING

Honk if you like my other car

WHAT WOULD JESUS DO IN MY OTHER CAR

MY OTHER CAR FOR PRESIDENT

My other car ASPIRES TO UNIVERSALITY

MY OTHER CAR VISITS VENICE IN ITS DREAMS

My other car is BARELY a memory NOW

 

ONE LINE POEMS

 

Proverb

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single schlep.

 

Not Likely

 “I’m the most modest person in the whole world.”

 

Post-Socratic Philosophy

Know thyselves.

 

What Does “Nostalgia” Spell Backwards?

I miss the things that will exist in the future.

 

Once

You only live once, especially at my age.

 

A Perfume Called Eternity at Macy’s Department Store

The saleswoman rushed up to me with a spray bottle and said, “Would you like to try Eternity?”

 

For information about Zack Rogow and to read other poems, see issue N. 1 of TDM http://www.thedreamingmachine.com/what-the-world-needs-now-and-other-poems-zack-rogow/

 

Featured image: Photo by Zack Rogow.