Kerouacian Haiku
Jackboots worn by
Jack
snapping fingers in the
alley
the moon is a saxophone
Sleep Deprived
Personification of Motionless Cars
Somnambulistic visions
flood my mind
as I sleepwalk through
gardens
of hewn bonsais.
They have been
landscaped to look like a question mark.
Imposed upon my severely
sleep-starved thoughts
are new cars—cars that
grow legs
and walk through the
sky.
Each car contains the
slim wrists of erotic women,
tiny feet walking
through the air
toenails painted pink.
But above their
legs
they own the bodies of
ugly autos.
This dissonant
appearance is seen as beauty
by the mindless
heard-poisoned masses,
John P. Citizen, and are
praised
by pure machismo in
every bar in town.
This poisoning is quite
sharp,
like honed scissors that
suddenly cut off the legs
and the sky-ambling cars sprout wheels and begin to walk again.
The Phony
Just because you
have italicized your life
does not give you the
right
to walk all over the
brittle sincerity
you have chosen to
divorce yourself from.
Why? you ask from out
the pile
of shiny whatnots
you hide beneath..
Because no matter how
brightly
the sun glimmers off
the perfectly
waxed
hood of your
Lamborghini,
we, the last people made
of salt,
can see right through
your fancy facade
to the cowering child
riddled with fear and
self-doubt
and apathy and poisonous
Mirrorism
and weakness that is
your True Self.
You have no right
to place yourself above
us
in the hideous hierarchy
of Humanity
that lives only inside
your head.
And, after such a
vulgar dispaly of behavior,
how dare you?
Everyone Pays a Toll
Time
ticks away
in woodpecker
mannerisms
human skin
starts to feel
a tug
at
its core as
gravity
eventually has
its way
it
speaks slowly
through the
years
but
firmly and
after
enough passage
of falling
sand
every one plays/fails/falls
victim
to the hereafter
descent— the turning
of s-
miles
into pouty wrinkles
the
eyes go blind in
crevices as
the
force the
intensity of the
inevitable pulls
more and
more
at the body
as hair grays
and
memories
fade into
dust-
y mountains
of
miscellaneous
that always
win
out in
the
end
the
seasons
pass
in dull accordance
and
all
that is
left to
know is that
no one has
ever
defeated
the automatic onset
of gravity's overdose.
Dark Side of the Bed
1.
Not to be late for the
lynching
not be sleepydead
we noticed the
nooseman’s Dracula tan
and teeth white as crack
inscribed with invisible
Braille
informing us to rage
against the amnesia
and whispering that
there were eyeholes
in the blindfold.
2.
Romeo roams the fallout
of romance
following the trail of
blooddrops from the rooftops
of houses where the
people, tripledosed and comatose,
have taken shelter from the varicose thoughts
and bad blood
circulation of crowds
living off of Wander
Bread and Coma Toast,
ten pill dizzy each one
of them
wondering about the
liberty vines
that never existed in
the first place.
3.
Suffering though the
Knifewound Blues and broken milk,
the tragedy of the
taxpayer weighs heavily
as they suffer the
syphilis kisses and sororicidal maniacs
hearing the conflagrant
mouth of Saint Conscience
roar into their barren
wombs of thought.
4.
Among charity bombs and
thorncrowns
they are always boxing
for airtime,
dreaming of insects as
they sleep
below the sawdust of
deformed stars,
each one dressed as
if
they were watching a
slow boat
while they live to dream
of killing two birds
with eighteen stones.
Heath Brougher is the Editor-in-Chief of Concrete Mist Press and co-poetry editor of Into the Void, winner of the 2017 and 2018 Saboteur Awards for Best Magazine. He received Taj Mahal Review’s 2018 Poet of the Year Award and is a multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. In 2020, he was awarded the Wakefield Prize for Poetry. He has published 11 books and, after spending over two years editing the work of others, is ready to get back into the creative driver seat. He has four books forthcoming in 2022.
