poem || Lawrence Upton

Final solutions

          (1)

into a darkness, empty;

one chance to wish,

to be glad, as if on sugar, to know

what happened, looking back,

everything? same to everyone

identical decorated information

a conversation below the hairline

barrier at the top of an engine

excluding the unauthorised from hesitation,

hands clutching, finger intermediaries,

helpless, miserable, swollen to fragile whining

the rustle of wind of a body

strangled on its beam, cracking

its head joke-like against serial vacancy

          (2)

turning up her stance, in

her demeanour, a lasting nervous

look, and it is light, emerging

clockwise from behind a top

of a face, wriggling eloquently,

dazzling micturation of propaganda,

trembling laughter, mechanism fully extended;

circuits break - open up; she’s home –

music playing from inside the memory,

cold condensing under the door,

possibility of another stringency,

to make love, to make money, an emergency

arrangement, running away in a corridor

of explanations we’ve heard echoed before

          (3)

still, sitting, with slanted line - landscape

allegories – how stupid may one get? anonymous

allegations? institutionalised

recognisability; and every where

magnified silence in this unwelcome day,

which went on, in the dry edge of his mouth

a determination towards criminality,

he was always respectful of the dead,

small eyes, non-committal, and a cruel neck,

searchlights the creatrix of astonishment

in his back; his muscular passivity

constructing artificial inspiration,

fumes ballooning in lungs of glad victims

falling gracelessly beneath his given word

          (4)

his arms I might strengthen

                                                a voice within

a very good girl murdered

                                                gradually

occurs to you

                             glossy colour pictures

quietly moving round their meaning

                                                                   vanishing

in terminii

                             heads being broken seals

she glanced with intensity

                                                          eating

rapidly

                   swallowing much half-chewed

                                                                             jaws clenched

absorbing and absorbed by absorption

he and she together in a set

                                                          a gaunt

serving of moment and nowhere

                                                          brushing

a suggestion

                             no more

                                                          it is enough

they are burned

                                      they are welded

                                                                             cold forged

such violence one finds admirable

face tilted towards a camera

                                                          wanting

2 poems || John Pursch

  

  

   

 

  

 

 

 

 

  

  

  

 

  

 

  

  

  

Venusian Counterpart Gel

We are surprised to find ourselves out of sequins, yet glittering profusely in tandem. Furlongs fly by, greener by the minute, flooding high-wire action figure platelet grease with anxiously deflated cobwebs of comatose settlers and paused specifics, mentioned into blinding speed by toroidal tirade mustard.

If only cunning sharks could surface daily in the dry mist of igloo yore, suppurating deeply stranded minnow submersion sleet from far beneath encrusted battle cries, spiking royal brunch powers with ague. Ochre might then spill to skilled lime peaks, frosting mown astral conifers with mystery, playing frond-ice shoe trees in commotion’s alimentary glaze of toe nut ardor.

But uncapped opinions roar to preferential paunch retiree muscles, wafting down rated wombs to habitual barriers of regrowth sunset phases, plucking noon guitar zooms from lensed tomato pinnacles on sated island streets. Bleary oxygen gears abolish truly ruthless endeavor beacons, scrambling below deck in fatuous infection’s spooled grommet brocade, despite Apollo’s harpsichord intention fit.

Now I hear a facile vacuity dripping perspiration on the dateline’s parsimony of printed page and ripe persimmons, stunning toucan accordions to pray per feasible illumination’s drunken charade. Chests wet growling wristband vets, piling false fragrance assonance among altruistic ateliers, angling for freedom’s frenetic zeal.

Bacchanalian undergrowth fills the cackles of my torpedo girth, plopping halitosis escapades in fault line proxy generations of fruity prosperity’s yellowed faces, finned within a cargo feint’s soporific omen.

Bought from pendant stories of buildings gone rancid with staircase brie in molting carrying crepes, sudden starlight wavers at fountain shirks for addled aldermen and conch holds, pinched to palatial facials, devolving to celestial rubrics of encaustic pickup tricks in sallow allegiance to endearment stirrup days.

Mucilaginous tomorrows expel an extra hemp line cardigan to furrowed mistletoe pajama batons, peeking slivers of spritely misdirection down ingredient causeway hulls, pent in Heisenberg retraction pith.

Plutonium hairballs bludgeon store-bought doorsteps to thematic batter’s ballpark end, plushly superfluous in lawn green nativity saliva, meant for oolong archipelagos of vowel-infested youth. Flaxen orators extrude parsed ignoble hominy, splicing elevated bannisters with unstable solecisms, propping crowned furriers into softball fender heists.

Bladders shop till trestles ransom doomsday cauldron canticles for pollen pumpernickel mutterings, tracking lusty continentals, forged in uncapped delicacies of blushing geriatric angles. Highland karma tears spill from shyness beacons, flopped to durable emetic friezes of Venusian counterpart gel, owning asemic radio Estonians in collared exoskeletons of closet pirouettes.