TURNER
it went by quickly
and looked the same as before,
except that the sky seemed much bigger
and the clouds were so tall.
APPLETONE
bail me out of this
drowned radio show,
where the hosts are all
past-tense irregular verbs.
did you know that a scarab would grow from the eyebrows of a designated affiliate?
the two colors are only a couple of shades apart.
arteries stopping more and more,
cast like shadows against the drunken sky.
my millennium is groping itself lewdly and we are all watching.
maybe I’m on to something that’s been kept well-hidden.
gilded spectacles glint like angry crabs at the light.
all of my clothes have lipped off in disgrace.
internal dramas will continue in the window like apple pie cooling down.
I’m so hungry I could eat a cow.
STADIUM WALK
simplified and needing an answer,
digested into water.
with a tasty excuse that absolves everything,
this future tincture goes wandering like antelope.
can it withstand a deeper enamel?
are we all taxidermied versions of ourselves?
are we outsourced for cheap?
empty bottles arrange themselves into bouquets for our solemn walk.
I’d isolate any accident and manufacture its plastic appendages myself.
GREENHEAD
old enough to be your uncle sam,
& washed down like drano
in a tempting ceremony
to conjure electricity
& engage the illusion
that constricts our skin like airtight ziplocs,
that protect us from intrusion
by the gasses & waters
that threaten our relation to interior spaces,
& a necktie do-over
makes sniffing cats sick
all over, without warning.
they can die in the night.
“YOU’VE TAKEN YOUR OWN FLABBY, CLUMSY SOUL AND AMPLIFIED IT INTO A UNIVERSAL PRINCIPLE”
& the gracious joke is that
they don’t exist naturally, but
have to be created individually
before being canonized in
noisy exaltation & fitting
glory & forgotten majesty.
to be spun out of
experience, & loss for gain.
to be washed in radiating
loveliness for one’s own
decrepit example.
it demands all of nothing
& it gives the negation
of everything into an
inverted precision.
balanced in hard situations,
the ground is warming
& the bugs are going crazy.
I always forget the feeling of the end stage,
but it presents itself amiably.
I get drunk on defeat
as I inch my bones closer.
one more move could
cause a rupture in the
dull fabric of our dreams.
TAPE HISS
a breath catapulted off a coil
aims desperately for misuse
of both formal & informal varieties,
& spins down in a panic,
into a horseshoe of doomed attempts.
the sound of it drives me off my rocker,
& the dogs come out to collect their scraps.
an orchid grows out of the trash
in a world that will never
smell the power of its frame.
Colin Ferguson 