Headline Poem 5/13/14 -- Selling Nightmares

Swiss artist H.R. Giger (Photo credit NPR)

Artist H.R. Giger has died. Here is the headline from NPR which inspired today's poem.

Selling Nightmares

You've tripped and fallen

Underneath your art 
which shrouded 

And suffocated, 
while you shared and sold
images and fantasies
documented on a notepad
next to your bed 
through fingers separated from shear 
terror and dread

Dali inspired dreams
hesitant to transpire within
or without your mind
in the hour
of mice and men and hay and wheat
and coolers and creatures
and skulls and unrest

Crazy are the ones who
understood the madness,
grateful they were not alone,
appreciative to listen
to 
their own screams
mixed with yours
alive through the surreal and decay
merging sex, technology, and legends of the day

You were a kind man, falsely judged 
by your
dark existence and alien jugs, 
marking mishaps of man and machine,

wicked handprints on the zebra's back

makes safari animals out of masks 

and cantaloupes

And dripping seeds 

Envelopes and darkness become serene

Men and women line up to purchase 

And receive 
someone else's nightmares, 
because they cannot get enough,
and for a moment it makes them forget 

their 
own

In she walks with a nobler idea...

Get rid of them altogether!