Brain Damaged Bastard of the Night
Brain damaged bastard of the night,
I scour the phallus-haunted mysteries
alone with the sadness and the slime.
Black moon pricks dead eyes awake,
hurts the swollen optic balls,
the rewired devilry of my head.
Misremembered visions backlit,
revived, eviscerated by the powerlines
that trace my sacral chakra, wake me.
Down to the tea stain shaped like Antarctica,
up to the blind, a vertical prayer mat against
the hot white glare of the sun,
my conscious drifts, plucked at random
& dropped onto the wheel of seasons,
surprising me almightily with November.
Pariah’s Cauldron – A Tryptich
I
The Liquid Hush – an ode to Gerard Manley Hopkins
Beware the pizzlegush of gashed gold
the gleeful rush of epiglottal garglings that toll
the all-night fuck and fumbledance.
Scoop my balls up, like the unladylike ladling of soup,
& lick these split red lentils; the couple-christed old man’s stoop,
the swooping loop of steel, the cold, perverted script,
gripped into your meal & out with your brush of gruel.
But be sweet, my beating sweep of thigh and teet,
it is not for you that I choose & die!
(My gush-gashed eye unzipping your unpried prize;
no meat-free mystery for me,)
but for the meeting of your thighs.
II
Beautiful Waists
We are a waste, we ephemeral beauties;
spirits that turn in the air like coccoons.
Watching the moon slide across the white hallway,
shapes in the branches remind us of bones.
What home? The pale sickly expanses of death,
so near slipped-down-the-cracks-of-life people?
We are the wastelands, the howling forever,
such utterly deep, pretty bleaknesses we.
Woeful invisible models clean toilets,
so fat moneyed asses can shit there in peace.
What is the point if this is our dharma?
suck diesel, fart diamonds, and dance, my dears.
III
On the Violent Death of a Telephone
Jealous of a shape, a ghost of negative space,
I move; the drapes betray my skull-bald anger,
tigering me light & dark in the black & orange
cross the room.
I killed my phone so loud you thought your sex or breasts
offended my hands, my swearing mouth.
No, my dear, it was my back, the slump of clothes
I could not stoop to grab, and the jobless pity –
it was a different snap of red.
Somewhere a yachted man handles fortunes,
and he could better handle you.
***Owen Clayborn is a British-American writer of poetry, full-length fiction, and short stories. His work usually features roguish characters in unusual situations. Owen is currently working on a picaresque novel. Follow Owen on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/claybornwrites ***
SICK LIT MAGAZINE 