A Pocketful of Poesy was and is again a Poem-a-Day(-on-Average) Blog! For 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, and now for 2017 and going forward, you may expect to see 365 poems every year, 366 for leap years.

but aren't they all random?

Monday, January 01, 2024

change a band-aid: steps

Make a drawing of a
human skull on lined paper.
Crude OK.

Tape it to the mirror
right where your head would be. Then,
while you change out the bandaid, avert
your eyes: use your peripheral vision
for the task itself.

For your main, steady gaze, keep your eyes on
the skull drawing
interposed between you

and mirror-you. 

The energy of denial and superstition
freed up by this ritual (which I'm making up
right now for the first time: important, or
it wouldn't work) will attract any negative
karma or ambient bad feng shui and trap it
between the two lines of gaze (you and mirror
you) and suck it into the paper. When

you're all done (remember to actually change
the band-aid: important, or it wouldn't work),
burn the skull drawing! Or you could microwave

it. Sterilized. 

Done correctly, this ritual would have an efficacy
equal to or better than the placebo effect OR
the power of prayer. Trust me, I'm a nonce ritualist
par excellence. I develop these all the time, and

never execute half the ones I develop! Sometimes
the need doesn't arise. Great ideas 

go to waste all the time

On second thought,
don't microwave it. No studies
have been done confirming
the efficacy of microwaves
on denial and superstition
permeated paper.  Performance
of a proper nonce ritual is no time

to go experimenting

Oh, potentially important.
DO NOT ATTEMPT unless
your peripheral vision eye-to-hand
coordination is B-
or better! THE IMPORTANT
THING is the bandaid
change itself!

All this woo woo stuff
is just to attract and trap
any supernatural or paranormal
forces that could complicate

the wound. You know.
If left uninterfered-with

2 comments:

dogimo said...

A lot of tough decision in this one

dogimo said...

I wanted so much to call this "nonce ritual how-to", and even changed the post title/poem name to that!

Alas, I couldn't keep it. It had to be "change a band-aid: steps"

For those of you in-the-know, reading beneath, it is REALLY

"nonce ritual how-to"