ANDRE MASSON



Took the human form, broke it, and chained the pieces
to a fence.

He laughed while the dogs had their fill.

Then light appeared through a patch in the sky,
and two lips pressed together with only seconds to live.

A man climbed an arm only to discover
he’d created a war between breasts and buttocks.

Returning to the source of electric eyes,
he opened a piano and found 10,000 mice
doing the Charleston to a slow Bolero
while tears filled the eyes of a red potato,

waiting for someone to embrace it.

THE ELEPHANT OF CELEBES

(after a painting by Max Ernst)


doubles as a live-in gardener
in the basement apartment of a beautiful woman
whose tits are magnetic doorknobs
installed to attract mariners and marsupials
who couldn’t get in any other way.
And when the orgies begin, the elephant plays host,
changing records on the turntable
from cabaret to calypso,
from raga to ragtime.
And when everyone departs,
the woman beds down next to the elephant
with whom she strictly has a platonic relationship,
which has been this way for over 2,000 years,
and will remain that way
until the woman unhinges her vagina.