Breakfast Thoughts 

Poetry by Jackie Draper

 

What came first the chicken or the egg? Speaking of eggs…how do you like your eggs?

 

Why do we

bother ourselves with such

trifles?

GIVE

ME TRUTH.

 

I’ve slammed the

switch on to expose

the cozy euphoric ignorance; the

Neanderthals that trotted about in

my skull evolved

into idea beasts. They are

mythical monsters that

lurk

in the woods. These

idea beasts scare you more than

anything that an ADT security home system

could detect. These eyes sans

blindfold drive you to

tuck in your child safely at

night and you hope that

he/she never discovers the idea beasts that dwell

under the bed and loiter in the closet

 

because they will set flames to your safety net.

 

But these idea monsters congregate

in the youths’ dreams and prowl in a manner more

clandestine than the CIA and more

dangerous than carbon monoxide.

 

Or is it the other way around? Dangerous – CIA?

They congregate in the

dim scream

 

of the violin

in the back of the song track that drowns

out the screams of all those

who suffer on the margins of society. You grasp tightly with manicured claws

to support the fence of the margins for fear of falling out of bounds or worse

letting the “others” cross over

the border. We rather

keep them on metal beds with

electric wires attached to their…

 

Yes there are lions and

tigers in my brain and

eels in my bloodstream that zap

me awake to realize the rippling/frizzing

cracks in “common sense.”

They mobilize the festering

ideas from my rib cage that should

be as valuable to you as bursting

oil wells.

 

Truth is my Colt .45 revolver

under the pillow. Give me truth;

it’ll never get weird

enough for me.

 

yes I’ll take truth over beauty; I’ll take knowledge of

Villa Grimaldi, the Kubark Manuel and Shock Therapy

over the spoon-fed idea of “spreading democracy;”

cause, ya know, they spread democracy like

the Bubonic Plague as they take over

the landscape of your country. They enter

with tanks and guns and leave your country

looking like a leper; destroyed by scattered

battlefields.

Some prefer their eggs poached.

 

Could we ask this question

to anyone other than the poachers

during the 70’s and 80’s in Chile?

With inflation at 375 % who thought

about style of eggs?

 

without the exhale of truth, these idea beasts

collide and beat one another and grasp

for the surface to breathe and take

life so much

that the inside of my skull is left like

 

scrambled eggs. so scrambled that

not even government surveillance can

wade through the piercing static. give me

ugly.

I lose my identity

within this monotonous beauty; I try to determine

reflection in the window of Falabella…but alas

I am transparent

as brand names have replaced

my yolk.

and don’t give me sunny-side up eggs

because I know they are only

“sunny” on the surface and the

inside is slimy and unstable so once the

safety net breaks with a pop, the whole

foundational yolk spills to the floor.

 

If you must

know.

I take my eggs

raw.