Lori R. Lopez is an offbeat hat-wearing speculative author, illustrator, poet, and songwriter residing in Southern California.  Her prose and verse have been published in a number of anthologies and magazines including California Screamin’ (the Foreword Poem), Dead Harvest, Impspired, The Sirens Call, The Horror Zine, Weirdbook, Spectral Realms, Space & Time, JOURN-E, Dreams & Nightmares, Altered Realities, Bewildering Stories, Aphelion, Oddball Magazine, multiple Rhysling Anthologies and H.W.A. Poetry Showcases.  Book titles include The Dark Mister Snark, Leery Lane, An Ill Wind Blows, The Fairy Fly, and Darkverse:  The Shadow Hours (nominated for an Elgin Award).  Seven of her poems have been nominated for Rhysling Awards.  A member of the Horror Writers Association, Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association, and Lewis Carroll Society of North America, Lori co-owns Fairy Fly Entertainment with two talented sons.  They’ve formed a Folk Band called The Fairyflies to release original music.

That Which Cannot Be Defined

Take comfort your discomfort is not my desire,
oozing and schmoozing toward semi-paralytic
limbs, tracing your shape, forming an outline,
puddling about and exploring you edgewise.

You are simply in my way; who am I to judge?

Born of random destruction, helter-skeltered
particles, and Record-Breaking Heat meets
Biohazard Climate Changeling . . . I am not
the average Industrial Spill or Toxic Waste.

I have feelings, in fact sentience.  A lot.

I’ll have you know this is not my first sip
of the Agent Orange Weed Killer Koolaid
by the way!  I’ve had a few.  Not sure what’s
happening at this point but I feel quite tipsy.

It isn’t like none of you were ever warned!

Ya might say I’ve watched a little too much
Television along the way; swallowed them
whole, wolfing and absorbing ticklesome
transmissions until dissolving in my soup.

I am what you made me.  Sludgy.  Oily.

The consistency of goop; a pool of effluvium
more or less sucked through a straw by some
Smart-Talking-Chatterbox, like a Chatty Cathy
with a voracious attitude, trying to ingest me!

Chewing and spitting me out, the nerve!

Then there’s the Plastic — because what isn’t
plastic these days?  In the air, water, dust . . .
on every surface, in every substance, part of
every lifeform.  Plastic is the new Carbon.

I’m sickened enough by the flavor of your floor!

And I’m done trying to distinguish or decipher
that which cannot be defined — which is you.
And you thought it was me!  I’ve decided that
I may have a plan for you after all, a place . . .

I even have a spoon you can borrow . . .

Not Plastic.  Heavy Metal.  I think you’ll fit
nicely into my acidic vibes and understated
contours, the spills and thrills of a messily
delightful nonconforming je-ne-sais-pas . . .

No, I do know, it’s on the tip of my tongue.

Or would be if had one.  Maybe I dooooooo,
somewhere in here.  Permit me to rummage
a bit.  Well, that’s not it.  Hmm, where did
that come from?  I think I know what I need.

I need to have a Rummage Sale!  Get it?

Except I can’t stick around.  It’s been fun.
It’s me not you.  I can’t tell which end or
side is up, you simply don’t make sense,
so I’ll be moving on.  No hard feelings.

The Poison should wear off in months.

No, wait.

Literally years.  It’ll take years.

And then months.

You’ll melt first, break down to muck.

That should take minutes.  Except for
the Plastic, and Chemicals.  Those are
Forever.  I should really look for some
type of Strainer at my Rummage Sale.

In Vincent’s Memory

Like a nagging song lingers, redundantly
pulsing in my brain, I’m a little obsessed
with Vincent Van Gogh.  Who lost a slice
of his ear at the end of a fight many starry
nights ago.  Such words need to be heard,
again and again.  Repetition erases, replaces
what is set in stone, wearing away.  As it is,
we don’t have to be that certain in an age
of denying facts and Conspiracy Theories.

Rumors floating in actual space abound,
end over end.

We only need to believe, and of this I am
convinced.  Almost positive, as with U.F.O.
Sightings.  Or a wig-wearing Wasp being
genuine — the lost pages found; penned
by Lewis Carroll, a discarded segment of
the Looking-Glass puzzle; denied by rigid
skeptics, panned and disregarded.  Daren’t
stare at me that way, I am not insane . . .
I prefer to refer to my condition as Mad.

And compose a tragic Ode to fill in blanks.
The missing pieces.

Vincent whispered in my ear he can’t recall
the hacking of his own, the act of self-surgery
that Art and Pop Culture attribute to him . . .
though he landed in a Hospital Ward where
he must have felt safe, for he later checked in
to an Asylum for a year.  Perhaps it can’t be
proved he was given too much credit then
and now for seeming madder than a Hatter,
while branded a disturbed unruly drunk.

I can tell his life was a struggle of Anxiety,
periods of Depression.

The victim of mayhem, bouts of misfortune.
Residing in poverty, relying on others, bullied,
his work ignored.  Requiring peace, security
to focus on creating amazing feats.  Happiest,
more balanced when he could be productive:
content and flourishing, doing what he loved,
not provoked or joked about.  Brushstrokes his
Therapy, a window or walk the best Treatment;
thriving in Nature, applying bits of imagination.

Moody and articulate, brooding and jovial . . .
A visionary.  Misunderstood.

A sensitive free-spirit with highs and lows,
prone to nerves, bursts of temper, and yet —
the infamous account, his best-known fact
in every version of Van Gogh, what anyone
is told of his life, taught by schools, may be
untrue!  An imperfect saint of Sunflowers,
arguing over styles; artistic differences felt
passionately as a Tempest in a Teapot . . .
Poor Vincent too easily a target for blame.

Masking guilt and violence.  Covering up
the brutal shame.

Leaving him to hold the blade.  Knife or
razor, details vary, as stories of turbulent
times will do.  But questions still remain.
Conflicting circumstances go unexplained.
Reasons blurred among journeys traveled;
repeated enough until truths unraveled,
for he was innocent according to Vincent.
During an ugly spat, a crazed dispute,
Gauguin arrogantly slashed his sword.

In Vincent’s memory, a one-sided duel
by wavering candlelight . . .

An appalled Paul wept and beseeched his
bleeding contemporary to spare a reputation
already stained; both unrecognized by Fame.
“It’s a secret!” mumbles the humble Vincent.
Translation, a lie.  Stuck in his mind, and he
cannot see beyond, nor resurrect the image
as clear as the crystalline lead-affected scenes
dazzling his eyes, captured on canvas in Oils,
a unique style.  Views belatedly celebrated.

Peculiar perspectives, coloring avid ranks of
tranquil impasto settings.

Vast audiences caught on at last to a sibling’s
faith, a sister-in-law’s devotion.  The world
remembers Vincent for his labors and letters.
Treasuring a troubled soul as much as a series
of impressions captured forever — indelibly
rendered.  Gauguin is in his head, Van Gogh
in mine, a ghost reciting each line.  Speaking
of buried regrets, his brother Theo’s death,
a grisly gift to a Maid; I need to get it down.

After carting him round, shouldering my own
mental-health burdens.

Like the possessions on his back.  Distracted;
unable to accept old stories and alibis, long
protecting those who did not deserve his trust.
Who labeled him a loon, claimed him suicidal.
It was not his Revolver that fired a fatal shot
and pierced Vincent’s belly, to vanish with
his Art Supplies.  Wounding the dearest ally
from a bullet’s repercussions.  Two lives —
entwined, unfinished; resting side by side . . .

Part of the Van Gogh history.  Shrouded in
wonder and mystery.

I state this, defiant, for I recognize a fellow
eccentric, poet at heart whose career appeared
unsuccessful, path miserable and wayward —
rife with adversity; a sleepless incessant battle
against practicality, harsh reality, inner fragility.
Existential pressures, poisons, abuses and critics
chipping parts of a whole, to topple instead of
support individuality; ideals and dreams in the
clouds, the stars!

One day I hope the record will show what me
and Vincent know.