Puppet Theatre by Greg Boyd - published in 1989, a collection of eighteen prose poems where Greg created a linoleum block print for each piece. None of Greg's artwork is available on the web, so I have included the above art that's very much in the Greg spirit. And here you go - seven of the eighteen poems, each twinkling with dark delight and whimsy.
THE GLASS BLOWER
We came to see the famous glass blower at work behind his window. First he made a horse, a transparent blue horse the size of a hand. It seemed to shake its hot liquid body on the end of his pipe as he gave it shape. Then he blew some more and the horse grew until it was bigger than a man, its legs poised and ready to run. We sighed aloud to see such beauty come into existence. But the glass blower was unmoved, unaware of our presence. Though we cried out and pounded on the window when we saw him pick up the hammer, he ignored us. Someone said he next created a lovely child who, when she shattered, broke the heart of every onlooker, then, from the melted shards, an angel whose features eclipsed those of the child. But we'd already left, overwhelmed and sickened by our grief at the loss of the horse.
TODAY IS SUNDAY
Today is Sunday and al up and down the street people are doing Sunday things. A man washes his car with dog shit. A woman chases after her screaming children with a knife. A prostitute walks back and forth along the sidewalk singing a lullaby. While the sun darkens in a ring as it struggles to burn a hole through the soiled sheet of sky, I go next door to borrow a cup of sugar for the gas tank of my lawnmower. The Jester's planting weeds in his garden. They twist around his forearms and pull him toward the black earth. Today is Sunday. Tomorrow I will read my newspaper and go to work.
THE WORD NOOSE
A man twists words together to form a noose. Noose is one of the words he twists. Some of the others include twists, man, form, a, together, to, and words. He throws the noose over the branch of a tree, which, along with bark, leaf, and trunk, each becomes part of the bristles that stand out on the rope and scratch his neck when he slips the noose over his head. He's planned this exhibition as a symbolic or ritual death, but with the addition of such abstract words as symbolic and ritual the rope grows to be bigger around than the tree trunk, longer than the tree is tall. So instead of dangling gracefully above his readers blue-faced and tongue jumping, the man sits wrapped inside huge coils of words, unable to say anything at all.
THE DIRT BOOK
It soils the white gloves of its public. It crumbles in the hands of its readership and falls in clots onto the floor where it's tracked on the soles of shoes throughout the house. It stains expensive dresses and ruins manicures. It's blown by the wind into young men's eyes and ends up on the windowsill of the nursing home. Somehow it gets into the food and forms silt around the drinking glasses. Naturally almost everyone prefers to read sky books bound between cloud-colors. Yet late at night people read the dirt book aloud to each other. Filthy as it is, they cover themselves and each other with its words. As they read, they enter the story. And in the morning they wash their sheets, soap their hands and faces, and hide the book someplace where no one will find it.
EVOLUTION
Somehow a crackpot biologist figures out how to grow a money tree. When the first bud breaks, Grant's face unfolds. Then the tree doubles in size daily, until it's taller than a redwood, its branches broader than an oak's. And still it grows, cracking sidewalks and toppling buildings as its trunk widens, draining lakes and diverting rivers as its root system stretches, eclipses the sun as its billions of branches, each bristling with hundred-dollar leaves, bud and sprout. Giant seed coins explode like popcorn, fall to the earth, and blossom overnight. Among men, those best suited for survival grow wings with which to fly to trees. They dot the leaves like aphids, their tiny mouths tearing at the green.
THE DOLL
On a shelf I find a most unusual toy: an antique doll with a hinged waist and a swiveling head which allow it to bend backward and turn its head so that it faces forward while looking back through its legs. The expression on the porcelain face seems pinched and unpleasant, the contortions of the doll hideous. When my friend returns, I ask her about the figure. "Don't be silly," she says, "it was a gift." When I ask from whom, she presses her lips together slightly and says, "From you."
I'M
I'm going to put my head back on now. Some time ago it rolled off my shoulders into the darkness. I was surprised; I'd had no warning. But I'm going to fix it now, put it, as I said, back on my shoulders. That's what glue is for, to make broken pieces adhere, though even after the bonding there's usually some kind of visible crack. And glue gets messy and one has to worry about bubbles. Sometimes it won't hold a heavy object like a head that's come undone. Staples at the neck might work better. But staples don't offer much support under stress. Duct tape or nails or screws: something will work. I'm positive. All it takes is faith. So this is it. I'm going to put my head back on now. I'm going to to put my head back. I'm going to put my head. I'm going to put my. I'm going to put. I going to. I'm going. I'm...
American author and artist Greg Boyd, born 1957
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