Absurdist Manifesto: The Art of Collage
There is no consensus when Dadaism ended & when Surrealism didn’t.
Most everyone who reads this will try to lick their elbow.
An ex-Navy SEAL, missing while mountain climbing in Maui, was found when
It was discovered that he was the leader of the search party looking for himself.
A Bigwig from United Airlines forced a man with Cerebral Palsy to crawl off one of its flights
For a baggage violation. Flight attendants just watched as he strained down the aisle
& American Airlines saved a measly $40,000 by eliminating one olive from each salad served in First Class. A black olive. There was some heated debate about The Crouton.
Water fountains were invented for the sole purpose of segregation.
A kindergarten student on a field trip left a pineapple on an art museum bench.
The next day, it was placed in a glass case as part of the exhibition.
Chang & Eng Bunker, commonly known as “the original Siamese Twins,” married sisters.
The first toy to be advertised on television was Mr. Potato Head. The original Mr. Potato Head Was not plastic; kids had to supply their own real potatoes.
There’s a psychological disorder, Boanthropy, that makes a person believe they are a cow.
Freud kept putting off writing his treatise on the Psychology of Procrastination.
Your nose is always visible to you. Your mind ignores it through a process called Unconscious Selective Attention. You’re probably thinking this must apply to many other aspects of life.
A company started selling air in a can as a joke; Chinese consumers made it a luxury item, Status symbol, paying up to $1,000 (in American dollars) per cannister.
Seven pitches, the average lifespan of a major league baseball. Guess the number per year?
Leonardo Da Vinci invented scissors thus catsup exits from its bottle at 25 miles per hour.
During the Victorian period, it was not abnormal to photograph loved ones after death.
We inherit memory-DNA from our ancestor so we remember what happened to them.
A marine biologist discovered an organism with a disappearing butt.
23.73% of photocopier breakdowns are caused by people sitting on them & photocopying their Asses.
The word “testify” is derived from an early Roman practice of having men swear on their Testicles when making a statement in court. Men, of course. will lie with their hand on a bible.
“Typewriter” is the longest word that can be made using the keys on only one row of a Typewriter keyboard.
A can of Coca-Cola can dissolve a mouse or nail. For luck, Sumo wrestlers make babies cry.
There are aborigines’ tribes where the old men produce breast milk & nurse the babies.
Richard Nixon smuggled a suitcase with marijuana through an airport for Louis Armstrong.
Pigs don’t actually sweat but every human has a unique belly button ecosystem.
The skin of the murderer George Cudmore was used to bind an 1852 edition of John Milton’s Poetical Works. Milton composed Paradise Lost blind which rhymes with bind.
Groucho Marx once lost a Groucho Marx look-alike competition. Came in tied for third.
A woman who lost her diamond ring discovered it years later on a carrot in her garden.
Cotton candy was invented by a dentist, Cornflakes to put a stop to masturbation.
Nomophobia: fear of not having a mobile phone with you. What makes you feel naked?
The tradition of hand & footprints in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Los Angeles started When silent film actress Norma Talmadge accidently stepped in wet cement.
Stepping in the same footprints in the snow so the posse will think there’s only one escapee.
The first undocumented game of rock-paper-scissors was played with only rock.
There’s a type of jellyfish considered biologically immortal unless killed; they don’t age.
There is a type of primate allergic to its own skin & oxygen & there are organisms, specifically Parasites, having sex in your eyelashes right at this moment.
Since the early 1980’s, the coast of France has had “Garfield” phones washing ashore.
Ancient Mayans used stale urine as mouthwash; now there’s a nerdy-boy convention where they Memorize vast stretches of Pi.
In 1634, tulip bulbs were a form of currency in Holland, more valuable than gold or diamonds.
In 2089, the six schools that did not have shootings were honored at the White House.
Anthropologists can trace the beginning of civilization by the carbon-14 dating of a when a Broken human femur was allowed to heal, but 97% of human history has been lost over time.
Tyromancy is the practice of predicting the future with cheese.
Figs aren’t considered vegan-appropriate because they have dead wasps inside.
Use a bicycle pump to separate the skin from the raw meat in preparing Peking Duck.
Baked beans are not baked but stewed.
There are more stars than there are grains of sand on every beach on earth.
While in space, astronauts are incapable of crying because there is no gravity & tears can’t flow.
Humans cannot walk in a straight line without a visual point. When blindfolded, we will Gradually walk in a circle, mostly because everyone has one leg shorter than the other.
Or longer.
The Art of Art (Today I Shall Be Marcel Duchamp)
& the blank wall is a stoic deity with a nail hole left
After the painting has been stolen.
A forger overpaints the masterpiece to smuggle it out of the country.
The Master foolishly paints over their own masterpiece.
A painter trips over a coatrack & fractures his arm.
I conceive of my most innovative art hunched on my morning
Toilet. The lid closed.
& refuse to hang any painting in my own home unless it’s upside down.
I never realized drawing a mustache on the Mona Lisa
Would spark a cultural revolution: delinquents & hoodlums
Enhancing posters of Popes & political leaders with unnatural facial hair.
Banksy must be my legacy, though his identity remains
Unconfirmed, subject to speculation which might be the definition:
How does one redefine art?
Maybe my more feminine, genre-fluid version of Dadaism is Mama-ism!
I don’t wish to jinx myself by revealing what I’m creating.
Infinitely I am not disinterested in anti-art.
When did graffiti evolve beyond vandalism? The subway train becomes a moving canvas.
A broken snow shovel in summer. A mailbox void of mail, now a mouse nest.
Trash or any manmade object repurposed as art.
I shall hover at the roulette table with my life savings & wager it all
On double zero. Red-black-black-red. Each spin of the silver ball an independent variable.
When what is mass produced becomes art;
; ? when art is one of a kind. Like punctuation without words.
A coatrack repurposed as a crucifix. Godless. God-absent, a sign: back after lunch.
The forger more Matisse than Matisse could ever be.
Various urines streaming into urinals & flushed or not flushed—
Clear to amber to dark canary to slightly bloody, a pinkish hue like a sunset.
Who was so innovative to first draw or autograph a friend’s plaster of Paris cast?
Humpty Dumpty as An Embryo
How many walls does it take for a room to be considered a room?
A Praying Mantis camouflages itself, close to becoming invisible against the sage wall.
It may or may not be part of the exhibit.
A field trip—sixth graders debate the aesthetic merits
(In their own words) of a broom closet.
A conceptual artist’s rendition of a broom closet
Or an actual place to house mops & buckets?
In the center of this incomplete room
(Please don’t think unfinished)
Sits a glass egg the size of a pregnant woman’s belly
At eight months-plus
That changes color with the afternoon light
On a platform, too high to reach.
Well, one could if one had a stepladder,
But generally, it’s considered impolite to fondle
A pregnant stranger’s stomach.
It appears the artist has a cruel, comedic sense
Of proportion. One leg’s shorter than the other(s).
The platform, not the artist, but maybe the artist
Who was ravaged with Polio as a child. (This detail may or may not have importance
Though it does give you a sense of what decade she was a born into.)
- Should art be stationary or dependent upon our desire to reach, or be out of reach?
- Is it important to know the personal history of the artist?
The artist is crouched behind the singular wall with her laptop hooked up to some gizmo
Which controls the glass oval which is a sort of baby she never had
In her imagination’s womb. Ovulation. The word a cousin to oval?
- Shouldn’t art be an illusion, a conception, simultaneously pre, & post the experience?
Like a duck hunter in her blind, she waits for the Disinterested,
The cluster of kids on a field trip, giddy just to be out of school,
Or an arrogant critic who pooh-poohs her installation.
When a victim (she thinks victim) (a victim of art) approaches, she jolts the switch,
& even though the viewer is out of arm’s reach
The egg shatters into its deconstructed elements.
If it were liquid it would simply reshape & reconfigure itself
The way humans do after a tragedy.
The viewer, naturally, is horrified, wondering if they will be blamed!
Explanations & excuses pinball in their cranium & eyes do a Felix the Cat wall-clock imitation
Claiming innocence to the everyone & no one
Who is there & the guard whose jacket is too big & lunch-stained.
Sleeves too long so he looks like he has no hands.
Imagine the entire population with no hands.
Artists with no hands.
After enough time has passed for the viewer’s panic to subside
The artist punches another key & the egg
Re-forms & magically levitates back upon its platform.
The viewer doesn’t trust that what they see they saw. (Bug-eyed kids giggle).
- Is Art a Time Machine or does viewing freeze the temporal aspects of our lives?
Scene II: a late middle age woman, undoubtedly an upper west side New York Chi-Chi patron
(Vintage Converse All-Stars & indigo hair)
Is objectively-subjectively admiring the egg
& the artist triggers it into collapse mode.
The woman instantly faints like a woman in a 40’s movie.
Cardiac arrest! Yes, an actual heart attack!
The security guard with the too big stained jacket pulls out his walkie-talkie
& takes charge, barks at everyone to step back.
Give her air. The six-graders do not give her air.
Yes, this horror was not intended to be part of the exhibit.
The art is now completely conceptual, is now part of the permanent collection so to speak.
The experience becomes a cocktail hour anecdote the people who were instructed
To step back retell, with embellishments & exaggerations,
To people they care to impress about or care about. Some of those listeners kidnap
The story & pretend they, too, were present for the heart attack episode.
- Does one need to engage in or be a participant in art for art to be art?
- Can art only be art if it seduces us into traveling in our imaginations?
Think about stars & starfish & the reflection of dead stars in a placid lake
Away from the lights of any city.
The artist flipped the switch to reform the egg
Before she zipped out from behind her secret
Wall to see if the lady was still breathing.
She wanted to blend into the wall like a Praying Mantis, become unseen.
A defibrillator hanging on the wall appeared.
The guard, apparently, wasn’t trained about its usage.
Let’s just say the patron did not return to her former life-force.
Of course, the artist felt responsible, wanting to hide in a broom closet
With its burned-out lightbulb. She always dreamed her art would be life altering.
Once art is released, who can tell how it can reshape the world?
- If art can kill someone, is it possible it might also bring someone back to life?
Bruce Cohen has published five volumes of poetry: Disloyal Yo-Yo (Dream Horse Press), which was awarded the 2007 Orphic Poetry Prize, Swerve (Black Lawrence Press), Placebo Junkies Conspiring with the Half-Asleep (Black Lawrence Press), No Soap, Radio (Black Lawrence Press) and Imminent Disappearances, Impossible Numbers & Panoramic X-Rays, was awarded the Green Rose Prize from (New Issues Press). A new book, Botrytis, will appear in 2026 from (Cornerstone Press). His poems and essays have appeared in literary journals such AGNI, The Alaska Quarterly, The Columbia Journal, The Gettysburg Review, The Harvard Review, The New Yorker, Ploughshares, Plume, Poetry, and The Southern Review as well as being featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily & included the Pushcart Prize. He recently was awarded the James Olney Award from the Southern Review.
Poetry/Dance Night: Saturdays, Tucson, Circa 1981
We were artsy graduate students, showing off new piercings or tattoos,
Enamored with the inequitable romanticism between dying & not living,
The important & irrelevant, debating whether goatees were clichés.
We took ourselves rather seriously. We spun vinyl at Tom Jackson’s
Adobe abode, who skipped out early from a brain tumor. Tony H. was there,
Not dead yet. We danced to frenetic, soul-emptying, a Capella gospel.
Tom’s roof literally blew off, though the two events were not time-connected:
The Swan Silvertones, Mighty Clouds of Joy, The Dixie Hummingbirds
& if someone drove out to replenish the liquor, The Five Blind Boys from
Alabama. Steve “Dr. Softy” O. inflicted advice on the back porch & chain smoked
To expedite his lung cancer. Jon “Spot” A. already half-dead, couch-slumping,
Engaged in a platonic allegory with a vodka bottle. Did I mention only the men
Danced? That the women giggled & chitchatted in the kitchen? A few baited
Us, wolf-whistled, shrieked snide wisecracks about how we should shake
Our money makers. At night’s end, we’d rendezvous into our predestined couples;
Some of us would remain together, even now. When the record skipped,
The closest to the turntable would slide the needle forward so the dancing could go on.
Research, Theories & Hypotheses
A reliable internet source published genetic
Evidence that modern Homo Sapiens inherited
DNA from Neanderthals which explains why
I can’t fathom the concept of cryptocurrency.
Fellow humanoids, we’re predisposed to function
In a complex bartering system: symbolic metal,
Artful paper, & gems, not to mention flesh
Services. Do me & I’ll do you, but only if you
Do me first. I’ll gladly skin & butcher that Woolly
Mammoth & microwave it if you unload the dishwasher.
Darling, will you accept this diamond ring to signify
Our love? It belonged to my grandmother & was
Smuggled out of Berlin during the 2nd Nazi Ice Age.
She dodged the atrocities & brutal winter of ’36
Before the universal use of antibiotics. Sometimes,
For no particular reason, on a hike, I’ll pick up
An un-special stone from the Triassic Period,
Finger it smooth for a mile or so before tossing
It into its new, contemporary, geological landscape
Where it’ll lay undisturbed for another few million
Years. The least perishable food that may outlast
Us is honey. A 5,000-year-old clay urn was found
In Tutankhamun’s pyramid in a recently uncovered
Secret passageway to the Afterlife. Still sweet.
I reckon food scientists should intern & shadow
The bee population. Kids are warned to never
Consume unwrapped Kandy Korn plopped into
Their Trick or Treat satchels. My anthropological
Theory: there is still a slew of not yet extinct humanoid
Species meandering around. Proof, people-watch
In any TSA line. Because of melting ice caps,
Species of previously undiscovered dinosaur fossils
Are emerging from dry riverbeds & excavators
Burrowing deeper to tap water sources unearth
Exotic mosaics from past civilizations. Don’t
Worry kids—America will last forever! Ancient
Egyptians undoubtedly had the same delusion!
My mother dolled up in her a mink stole, my grand-
-mother her fox shawl, the head still appearing
Very much alive, it’s teeth extra white & pointy,
The glass eyes wildly primitive, her diamond ring
On one finger, my great grandmother’s on another.
