Hemingway, Surrealist Budgie Poet
As told by Hemingway’s foster dad, adoptive mom, and secret admirer
Little Hemingway, Mickaboo’s blue and white budgie, is quite the poet. We don’t know for how long he has been a poet, or if his poetry was inspired by the emptiness of heartache. You see, Hemingway came to Mickaboo with his mate Shirley, who soon thereafter died of a fast-growing tumor. But, after grieving for several days over the loss of Shirley, Hemingway remained brave and friendly.
Thus, his personality and story mirror that of the younger Hemingway's alter ego, Frederic Henry, the ambulance attendant who struggled for his salvation amidst the ravages of The Great War, only to lose his true love, in A Farewell to Arms.
And, while his namesake was known for a style of economy and understatement, our Hemingway is more of a Surrealist. Maybe it was Shirley’s death that drove him to see the world with a touch of absurdity. But whatever his creative inspiration, we feel it is worth publishing. So here is volume I of Hemingway’s poetry:
"What is written in breath on cold glass is poultry.”
We assume that he meant to say "poetry" instead of "poultry." Or, at least, we'd really like to believe that he meant to say "poetry" instead of "poultry" because that would have indeed been more . . . well, poetic. But just so that we aren't accused of revisionist psittaculture, we’ll leave it as it is and assume that he was perhaps teasing us with a touch of pun.
Possibly his most Surrealist line was about:
"... the Grenadilla flute blowing brokenhearted in the amethyst wind."
As delightful as the “chance meeting on a dissecting table of a sewing machine and an umbrella.” Yes, it would have made Andre Breton proud.
Among his occasional comments that appear a bit profound is the most memorable so far, in which he seems to contemplate the wonderment around him with a resigned, deistic attitude:
"Who am I to deny creation, whatever it is."
And, one interpretation of this line:
“Anywhere you turn will be your story.”
could be that he is acknowledging that, in an ostensibly deterministic world, we can still choose, to some degree, which stage we act upon even if we can’t write our own screenplay. On the other hand, maybe he was just making gurgling sounds and we’re reading too much into them.
For a lighter touch, there is the truly delightful line:
"All I can do is take your breath for a little music."
which is one of our favorites.
He has also made up a couplet of poetry, but, it wasn't terribly good, his foster dad reminding him that "peregrination" and "annihilation" do not exactly rhyme.
Since moving to his adoptive home, Hemingway has tossed out little witticisms like:
"It's here for you if you want it."
and the more poetically romantic:
"Your breath moves in and out of me."
But, Hemingway doesn’t only speak poetry for poetry’s sake, he will also comment on the situation at hand. For example, the morning after Hemingway’s foster ‘tiel friend, Stephen, had a night fright, Hemingway assessed:
“In the dark, we thought they were his wings.”
And one time, dad was asking Hemingway’s little fellow foster, Calista, if she had been a good girl, to which Hemingway chimed in, “a saint, she spoke to flowers.”
He also, we are told, once called his foster dad a bhanghee, which is supposedly the Urdu word for ”male toilet servant.”
Hemingway's original name was Happypants, but when his foster dad mentioned it around him, Hemingway mumbled something about "Butt Muffin," so it got changed. But every so often it slips out. His foster mom it pretty sure that when she referred to him as the "blue bird of happypants" he quite emphatically retorted that he was “the real deal!”
Sometimes he even seems to be poking fun at us and our obsession with his talking talent. The other day he was budgering on about something and his adoptive mom walked up to his cage and said:
"Hemingway - what ARE you going on about?"
to which Hemingway replied, probably with a twinkle in his eye, "uh oh!".