Back to Issue 4

Young Man by Mark Stafford

and so you say young man
that you hear the dragons screaming
but no one else does
because they're off rummaging
through the dumpster souls
rattling in the shards
stained by reflections of too many ugly faces
desperate beauty waving from the tower
mocking the sniper's glare
sent from the sledgehammer hands
of extinct pulsating minds

well, they were running while they were screaming
and now they're out of breath
slumped on the floor
nails dug into the grain
the machinist's toys are simple young man
they are not free
they come to rest
and move only when nudged
the violence of anything more is too much

you've felt with your hard cracked tongue
the smoking crater rims on the backs
of the rigid and the loose
the sound of the molding as they're dragged
across the narrow overgrown path
sounds a lot like screaming

Open Gate by Mark Stafford

Blasting suffocating light abuses what little of dusk is left
and a mean small squeaky man pushes out a gate door
leaving it open, jammed into the grassy earth
the fusing of moods beyond him begin to shed each other
and make sense alone only
as he walks they meld again and disappear
the left over bleeding for him

She makes sense alive, angry, flailing like a tree
taunting a tornado
more afraid of the demon than the destruction
lifeless, soulless, she is chaos spread with a dagger
on my mealy flayed guts         

The drifting jabs of heat wake and glide off the boiling dew
the little hills roll the anesthetized man
like a quarter through its fingers
sloping down a little more than usual
to make up for the heavy laden breaths
moaning a bass cadence on the other side
of the heart's clanging

Insidiously she watched the deliquescence
trapped by the shards and splinters
the tattered pictures catching fire
bobbing in a rip current around her molten ankles
hinged for grace in collapse  

portentous by sight, the now languid and chary man
soon finds the deep woods in which to feel safe

Brain bubbling wedges drive deep
into prefabricated crevices
slackened by shuddering columns of pounding half memories
gasping and clutching for their lifeblood refulgence
examining each other's perfidy
devouring calamity buttressed hope
in sinkholes lined with inuring angels

She waddles when she walks
the load obvious and uncomfortable
there are dents in the doorways
bruises on her forearms and elbows
her withy companion is wormy
in his unrecognized magnificence

She is worrisome and lonely
little man, little man
grow on your own
I don't have your need

Monsters scratch and claw
at the little man's brow
in the deep hollow woods
pushing him around
jostling his need
he is scared and lonely

In the quilted canopy
all the fighting fingers are tired
of pointing at each other, reaching
not knowing if they've been forced
threatened with the fall
but the little man is shuffling amongst its dead
focused on how they gather
listening to the crinkling
echoing his confusion of why
they are released

The vociferous silence
pocketed amongst the sarcastic harmony
of stabbing creatures rips his ears off
in the middle of the night
forcing only light switch flicking illumination
to navigate the shin shredding trunks
and arm bruising doorways

His hairy stretched skin quaffs the cooler drowsy air
mollifying the bludgeoning
leaking the tortuous ideology into a pool at his feet
wrenched by spasms
clamoring for the pre-dusk detonation
to incinerate the noose of clarity