The bullshit of surrealism goes back and forth 

From meaning to no meaning 

And back again 

From decade to decade like the seventeen-year cicadas 

Like the child you’ve raised against its will 

Asleep in your house for the last time 

Before going off to college and those scholastic lies 

You rejected decades ago at the same age 

As if words were a science and not a guess: 

 

Why do we live in a museum my daughter asks 

Why do all your patients die my son quizzes? 

 

The manes of Dalí’s finely painted lions catch on fire 

The sun swallows the Earth the sun later swallowed 

By a black hole where God does not throw dice 

A prediction an old man made against his will 

Like the Second Coming or a corporate meeting 

On an operating room table 

A soundless umbrella and a sewing machine 

A man with a bowler hat and cane 

Floating immobile in the sky forever.