Vagary

Vagary
Austin Andrus

There was always a question of uncertainty in my mind when I was out there doing those things. Never did I feel secure about anything I did during that time. It’s the main reason I decided to stop. I quit when I realized no chance of dignity or reason could come of it. So, like an abortionist forsakes its baby, I abandoned this life. What life? A life of discrepancies and surrealism. I quit the life I had for so many years lived up to and loved so dearly. That is, until recently. Truly, though, I do desire it again, here in the shaking of a branch, there in the dripping of rain, and here again as that twig snaps and falls to the ground. I desire it as an abortionist desires to reclaim the baby she has lost. But, then again, I forbid myself from enduring the pains to which I exposed myself when I was naïve enough to accept them. I have passed on from the world of poetry…

I once was a great master of words, meters, and symbols. At one time, I was the grandest of them all. I was the “spell caster,” as some said, and “Bardthoven” to others. A versifier, a rhymester, the lyricist of the soul… but that life is long gone now, for I have suffered enough of its aggressive nature and distraught spirit. Its disposition of cause agony pushed me away. Why, do you ask? You assume that poetry is a healing tool, but you do not know the truth of the matter. If you desire to know how poetry truly affects poets, I would advise you to read on. I would like for all to know how tedious and degrading the art of poetry truly can be…


When I was young, maybe just nine years old, I wrote my first true poem…

The sun casts the light,
The sun shines on bright,
The sun lights the day,
But the sun, it also casts the shadows.
The sun causes the dark.

When my teacher read it, she looked at me strangely. She told me it was not happy enough, crumpled it up, and threw it into the trash bin. I had to dig it out with my angered hands through the collection of banana peels, chewed gum in tin wrappers, old papers, among other various items. I finally found it below the pencil shavings. I opened it, the paper crinkling in my hands, and read it again. As I read it, I smiled. It made me feel warm inside, and I new it was my invention, my creation, my Frankenstein.

A few days later, another thought came to me. It came to me when I noticed the other children staring at the dead toad on the playground. I walked into the circle to see what had happened.
“What happened?” I asked, along with many others.
A girl said, “Tommy killed a toad!”
“Why’d he do that?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” the girl replied in a questioning, high tone.
I left the circle and sat on the old swing. I tilted forward, then backward, rocking my feet and body as I went, and in my mind, I formulated a verse…

The life of a vermin
Cast out on the side
Will always let itself be know
Despite its lifelessness,
For in death comes silence,
But also the voices of others…

I stopped swinging and walked away from the scene. More kids had come, others had left, and for the remainder of our time outside that day, the toad remained the rich commodity everyone had to see. It was quite unique, for how often do you got see the victim of a murder?


A few years later, during my fifteenth summer, I witnessed something even more extreme that influenced my poetic life to come. I was swimming in the river along the bank. I would often go there in the summer to swim alone. It was my escape from the ignorant world around me. I had no friends, for I wanted none. I rejected my family, for they were uninteresting to me. The nurtured me falsely, and therefore I gave back to them the false sense of me. To them I acted as if I were a superhero who wanted ever so dearly to save the day, but could never do so. I would volunteer to clean the dishes, and in doing so, I would break four plates, seven glasses, a few saucers, and one of my mother’s precious pieces of fine china. It seemed right in my head, but not so apparently in hers. However, I would fold the clothes, clean the bathroom, and whatnot with seemingly gracious ease only to be shot down by a cry of grief.
“My mother’s china!” my mother would scream. “You flooded the toilet!” “This is your father’s underwear tied to my panties!”
I knew not mostly of what she said, but I assumed it was all complimentary. But when my mother punished me for doing such things, I would go to my room and escape out the window to this river where I would wade into the middle and watch the fish go swim past my ankles. I would watch the herons fly overhead followed by the geese and the ducks. Most importantly, though, I would write.
My greatest bit of work to that date was inspired by this very incident I witnessed that summer. One day, after running from my mother’s tortured screams of, “Why must you always sweep the dust into the refrigerator?” I ran to this secret place of mine only to see a dead fish lying upon the beach of gravel. It was sliced open along the bottom side, its miniature organs and tissues spilled out onto the stones. Then I heard a man walking toward me, so I ran into the brambles to hide from him.
A moment later, I could see a man in oversized, rubber overalls kneel down next to the fish. After glaring at it for a while, he proceeded to lift it up in his gloved hands, lift it to his nose, and smell it. I took a step back, making a slight noise on the earth. It was enough of a noise to cause the man before me to turn. He looked into the undergrowth, right at me, but saw nothing. I stared in horror as I looked upon his face…


A man of sheer distortion,
A man who had seen no light of day,
A man sent from the bottom of the river,
A man with eyes that glowed,
With a gnarled look,
And with a hook grown in his cheek…
That was the man I saw,
That was the man from whom I ran,
That was the man I knew I’d never wish to become.

But it was not yet that I had run, for something about this man intrigued me. The way he looked made me even more curious. He was a man made from nature, a tortured man, a demented man. I could not describe him to you anymore, beside the fact that his hair was gray and his feet were rather large. More disturbing, however, was the next thing he did. Rather than starting a fire and cooking the fish, he instead put it to his mouth and slurped the insides clean out of the poor river creature. He then proceeded to bite at the raw fish with his rotten teeth and deteriorated gums. All the while, he stared through the bushes, not at me, but past me.
Then a duck let out a whine and the man immediately dropped the fish, stood up slowly, and walked off the way from which he had come. A moment later, I reemerged from the underbrush and stared down at the fish…

A stone of unknown color showed itself today.
A river of unknown origin washed it there.
The stone was living
Yet also it was dead.
And as it lie there it showed its true self:
A shredded piece of being
That had once before known its place,
But that now had become nothing,
Save, perhaps, for a misunderstood fish.

I never returned to that place along the riverbank. I left it for the man to have for himself. I realized then that if I continued living in the manner I had been, that I would inevitably turn out to be like this man of the river, this man of unknown origins, this man of disturbing being. So, with all of that in mind, I learned the true meaning of household chores, of a social life, and, most importantly, of poetry…

After graduating from high school, I knew college was not my path. I did not do well in such environments. I desired not for a degree or student loan debt, I merely wanted to go out there and be a poet. I got my first opportunity when I saw a sign for auditions for a vocalist for a rock band called Vent. I went to the audition and this is what I sang:


Grieving beasts consume the world.
Heralding fiends deny reason.
However it is seen,
A world is just a seam
Meant to be torn open by a curious being.

To my singing, they liked. I hadn’t had much vocal training in my life. My mother made me join the church choir when I was young. I sang for one day then skipped the rest. I’d walk around town, writing poetry, until she arrived back at the church.
My high school counselor put me in choir my first semester as a sophomore, so I was forced to sing then. I guess they thought I was good, but the material I sang was so mundane and simple. I would much have rather sung my own poetry, so my taste for singing became like that of rotten cheese. So, when some of my peers heard me singing, they asked if I would be the vocalist in their band. I accepted, seeing this as a possible way to put my poetry to good use.
While in this band, I was able to sing my own lyrics and present them to the world. I did not too much enjoy the life. We sold albums, in the millions I suppose, and gained much fame and praise. People, however, were misinterpreting my lyrics, which, in the lingo of my fellow band mates, “pissed me off.”
So, after earning millions of dollars on two albums over three years, I decided to leave the band. They went on to find a new singer and retained their immense popularity. I didn’t mind; perhaps I was even happy for them. They’re lyrics weren’t nearly as good as when I was with them, but that’s just life. I was content with my decision. I decided to release a book of poetry. Nobody bought it though, and I ended up losing money on it, though still remaining considerably wealthy due to my other investments.
When I turned seventy-seven, I wrote my final poem. You first of all may be wondering why I skipped all the years in-between my glory days and my final days. The reason for this is because they sucked and I would rather not recall them. Anyway, here’s my last poem:

Life fucking sucks
So go fuck some ducks.
The world needs to die
So go eat some Thai.
This poem sucks my balls
So go rape some dolls.




THE END