3 Poems

By Tim Frank

Tonight, I Dine

I want a cocktail or two,
in a tall litter bin
scrubbed clean
then rimmed with salt
garnished with a pink armadillo
or a small polar bear
perched on the rim.
Next, for starters
I shall have mounds
of neat garlic butter
carved into
Mayan pyramids
by children in sweatshops,
served by
Olympic swimmers
in gothic drag.
Woozy and lightheaded
I’ll face the dominion
of the plat du jour.
But now I want to eat
in a Buddhist temple,
surrounded by starving
Tibetan monks,
and seek nirvana
as I dine.
But I’m given plain soggy cornflakes
by a battalion of Nazi soldiers
wearing baseball caps
turned backwards,
and cheap Groucho masks
drooping from their cheeks.
The monastic life
isn’t for everyone
and neither are cornflakes.
Then I feel a little peaky—
awash with waves of violence
all the way to my toes.
Maybe my neighbour
spiked me—
the lady with a Mallen streak
in the midst of her thinning chestnut
hair.
She’s old and barren
but, still,
she wants my babies.
I have a sculpted physique,
and my eyes glow
three shades of blue.
I’m an Adonis,
so sue me.
The rage soars like a hot air balloon.
I reach for my cordless chainsaw
and stalk my wife
up and down the stairs
in my leather cowboy boots and
tight-fitting CKNY underpants.
Worn out,
I realise she’s with my mother
buying supplies for her
arid salads and toxic chicken fricassees.
She won’t cook me the food I want
so I order in.
But now,
I build a pyre in my living room
from the remains of a crashed airplane fuselage
found tangled in my backyard orange tree.
I pray to the god of gluttony, Edifagia,
then I spread out some plastic sheeting
for the blood-soaked
PCP madness to come.
I crack open some wine,
let it dribble down my chin,
and wait
like a Viking barbarian
ready to devour my wife’s flesh
and then maybe
dial a pizza.

Smartphone

I swallowed a fly
that dissolved like LSD on my tongue—
I’m freaking out,
you can’t stop me from reading the walls
and your face
with my shades on.
It feels like’69
I was born in ‘81,
you wouldn’t understand, but I’m aiming
my rifle
through space and time, while
I sink into a bath wearing my wedding day suit
and I’m ready to make a public statement
with a strippers’ voice
that sounds like a car crashing.
One night my parents went for a Korean meal
without me.
They left a message on my voicemail
saying they’d mugged a woman for her jewellery,
said they’d reached Level Two.
So, I’ve decided
I’m going to drown my family
in a man-made lake
and rid the world for good of smartphones
with Illuminati bonfires
and a library full
of fortune cookies.

Sufferhead

There’s a song that goes
Oh lord we suffer, oh how we suffer.
I feel that suffering
right now,
like a scythe launched into my skull
by overseers on a crushing hot day.
A two-faced bouncer
watches me through tinted windows,
and orthodox temples
draped in lingerie,
whisper threats
to my arrhythmic heart.
Can a God I don’t believe in
care
about slavery art
hung from trees
or refined gallery walls?
I want to sleep with a cruel woman on a secluded island
she’ll have fangs and claws
and she’ll teach me the freedom
of prenups and legal documents that spontaneously combust.
But when people discover my hideout
I’ll build a gunboat,
politely make my excuses,
and blow
my brains out over the pacific.

Tim Frank’s short stories have been published in Bending Genres, X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, Maudlin House, The Forge Literary Magazine, The Metaworker and elsewhere. He has been nominated for Best Small Fictions. His debut chapbook is, An Advert Can Be Beautiful in the Right Shade of Death (C22 Press ’24)