Surrealism and Whatnot

 Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem 

“Painters are not the legislators of the world.  They are the prestidigitators of the swirled.”  ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

The silver of the rose upholds the space

Abortionists have planted.  Mist’s Monet

Is banished by Cezanne.  A sentenced race

Is run by stainless steel.  It calls for gray

To strengthen up its polished light of priests

Escaped.  Picasso is too purple in

His scrapings.   Nightmare shapes turn into beasts

Replacing women of the night.  Their sin

Becomes forced holiness for men who vaunt

The syntax of a papal balustrade

Inside red haired receptacles.  Rapes haunt

The women after death where lust is sprayed.

  Mont Saint Victoire rebels.  It needs its thigh

    Returned by Salvador’s sliced open eye.

Jean Barraqué: Séquence (1955)

~ Phillip Whidden