Paul’s mostly first-person poems dazzle with endearing child playhouse wit and wistfulness. He writes from the kind of mental Wonderland that flourishes in those whose development has not been stunted by professors or publishers who say, “No! You mustn’t do that!” Often these poems/short-short stories read like the original Brothers Grimm fairy tales before they were censored and softened for children: imagine Snow White hated not by an evil stepmother but by her own mother. In these odd poems the child is very much the father of the man: reading and listening to these pieces, we aren’t sure where the child ends and the grownup begins. There’s something sweet and James Stewart about the narrator of Paul’s poems: he is an idealistic George Bailey wandering through Pottersville appalled by what he sees. And we are appalled with him, but let’s face it: Pottersville is a lot more fun than Bedford Falls, and it’s the darkness that makes the light that shines on Paul all the more visible to us. It’s a wonderful sunset in the Temple of Olives.
Olive
Oil
The toast would taste better with eggs, but there aren't any so i pour a thimble-sized serving of olive oil on, to make it more
flavorful. I like the taste of olive oil. it reminds me of the time when i was eighteen and jumped clear over the hood of my car
because i could. To be more specific, olive oil is the part where i leave the ground and I'm in the air, halfway across. Right then,
before landing on the other side. That's the taste of olive oil. It also tastes the way Madagascar sounds when you say it
backwards. If there were olive oil cologne, I would wear it and if there were olive oil goldfish, i would have two in a bowl on the
table. For some reason, it is also a man swallowing lighter fluid because the pain in his belly is bigger than the Kalahari
Desert. But maybe that's only when you drink it straight; and sometimes it tastes like Brigitte Bardot. To be more specific,
in the scene where she is sunning naked in Capri, an impossibly blue ocean wrestling with the sky in the distance.
The toast would taste better with eggs, but there aren't any so i pour a thimble-sized serving of olive oil on, to make it more
flavorful. I like the taste of olive oil. it reminds me of the time when i was eighteen and jumped clear over the hood of my car
because i could. To be more specific, olive oil is the part where i leave the ground and I'm in the air, halfway across. Right then,
before landing on the other side. That's the taste of olive oil. It also tastes the way Madagascar sounds when you say it
backwards. If there were olive oil cologne, I would wear it and if there were olive oil goldfish, i would have two in a bowl on the
table. For some reason, it is also a man swallowing lighter fluid because the pain in his belly is bigger than the Kalahari
Desert. But maybe that's only when you drink it straight; and sometimes it tastes like Brigitte Bardot. To be more specific,
in the scene where she is sunning naked in Capri, an impossibly blue ocean wrestling with the sky in the distance.
© 2011
Paul Suntup
Paul Suntup was a Featured Poet who read his poetry at the June 2011 Second Sunday Poetry Series
Paul Suntup was a Featured Poet who read his poetry at the June 2011 Second Sunday Poetry Series