Member Poem

Surreal People

If surreal people were the world
our landscapes would
reflect the inconstancy
of our unconscious condition.

The evolution of flora and fauna
would have learned nothing
from Darwin.

Our bodies would undergo
countless transformations
from the grotesque to the sublime.

We would sleep dreamlessly,
our thoughts and desires at rest,
to wake each morning to a reality
framed by random association.

Worlds of metaphoric explosion
and grotesque hyperbole
would expose
startling revelations
lost in the moment
of their comprehension.

We would confront time
and its liquid ticking
in a petrified railway station,
and exalt in the creation
of gods and goddesses
in geometric exactitude
as chronicles unraveled.

If surreal people were the world,
the wonders and horrors of existence
would forever begin anew.

Appeared in Strange Horizons