The Mortician of Love
Where is the dappled rose within flesh dismaying?
the mortician asked
himself.
Still young & alive,
despite their arguing
death was usually
outside them when together
motoring on the
mountainous entrails of space.
Atmospheric accidents
have a way of altering
the perception of
mortality's proximity
to the slow fire burning
within you.
Dents in metallic
flesh-bodies
collide with our own
sometimes,
such as when riding next
to you
in this diaphanous
infinity
somehow imploding love
via force & fusion
produces the ultimate
moment
of comets passing. Then
yourself,
wearing the airs of
crystal beatitude,
to paint the stardust in
nature's dour dustbin
overwhelmed by the flood
of ages
lacerating your last
sweet smile.
Now what's left of you
saddens
on my stellar examining
table, a rapture
of fully decomposed
petals
my instruments probing
expose
your center of gravity
at last
I See the Harlequin
The harlequin cometh, his face
impaled by a boy's
slingshot rock
from the mountains of
bygone Rushmore
nubile clowns wait to
embrace his clown nose
with the pastiche of
invisible innocence
winding through the
myriad of city lights
the harlequin still
patrols with wand
& magic forceps
looking for a proselyte
other than himself. His
uniform is sold
by the dollar store of
insidious elves
where your credit is
always good
(even in bitcoins &
barleycorn!)
for the true light of an
artist inhabits
garments spun from the
closets
of misty monks floating
in aisles of the
fashionable demimonde
you'll proudly wear
every sabbath.
The harlequin must
convert
the mundane into the
glittering,
his mind blurred by
sunspots of time
winnowing the vision of
his duties.
I too am a harlequin,
hiding behind
the circus beams of
immortality,
disguised as your next
holy redeemer
wearing my android eyes
above
the heart of a
photoshopped horizon.
The Landscape Where Love Once Was
Were we born yesterday under calamitous skies
heavy with clouds of
nature's deception
fooling us to believe in
rain, only rain.
Where the precipice of
your kingdom
was sullied by the
tongues of fire
distant dragons spit
forth?
Over plants too your
handmaidens
nurtured daily with
loving eyes,
watering the aegis of
ages
as their tears dripped
down on leaves
slowly besotted into
brown decay
& damp with the rich
smells
an undercurrent of
pooling mud brings.
It was this awful sight
you pictured a savior
being buried under, for
a painting
where the master's
colors blended
into dark deception
transplanting our eyes
to believe something
freeing us was just
beneath
his black strokes
where the canvas gesso
kept hiding
its innocent whiteness.
One Night Awakening, To Bear the Onus of History
(after
William Hope Hodgson)
It settles on his shoulders to bow him
yet he bears it through
the morning's coming,
as any leader does when
time announces
its burgeoning wisp of
transcendence.
In the next room the
mid-wife witnesses
the birth of an
evanescent being:
something like a ghostly
wend
of Shangri-La City
rekindling itself again
for all
to silently acknowledge
& marvel at.
The man, now fully
awake, dusts time off
sharp edges of unbroken
valleys
as hungry wolves watch
him.
From outside the cabin
shapeshifters
of new-born Shambala
wait
to impregnate dawn with
splintered sounds
of ancient voices
calling.
Spirits that will take
the living back
into those chiaroscuro
interstices where
he must go again:
to keep keen forces
moored between
this life & the next
stepping into the black
hole of space,
far from any terrestrial
trivialities
into deepening shade he
becomes
a born-again nova
ghostly flesh will
worship
Simply Desolate Ocean-less Forfeits in Space
(after a
line by Laura Kasischke)
Now to all those who are jaded young I salute you
while doffing a cap
monogrammed by fairies wearing boots.
Now to the swimming
beaver I marvel tonight
at the efficacy of
nature in full force
from great beings to the
smaller one,
where the genome's watch
ticks away
in the heart of any
gnome
like a literary clock
without hands
sentencing noble
chapters to our existence
inside the pristine
void.
While touching the nape
of necks
with an unfurling tongue
your candle burns too
enlightening skeletons
of the drowned
should they awaken, spit
out saltwater
to stop the wax
embalming you with its joy
the bog will still
welcome us to its depths
where the secrets
impenetrable lurk in evil
complicity with fate's
inexplicable waves.
Peter Magliocco writes from Las Vegas, Nevada, where he's been active for several years as writer, editor, and artist. His work has appeared in various online and print poetry publications such as Scars, Harbinger Asylum, Bluepepper, Unlikely Stories, Taj Mahal Review, and elsewhere. His latest poetry books are Go to the Pain Lovers (Duck Lake Books) and The Underground Movie Poems (Horror Sleaze Trash).
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