Tuesday, 16 May 2023

Four Poems by Steven Fortune

 



CLERKS 

 

It takes an entity 

of an office in between 

god and genie 

to separate the shy 

from the introverts 

Through a database of 

Pandora propaganda 

the entities surmise situation 

dynamics 

amongst a family on break 

and an age breaking from consent 

Apparition communes of 

a more invisible yet deafening 

epitome exist 

only in these huddled pocket 

universes 

in the whispered name 

of circumvention 

And as it is with all entities 

the impression of existence 

and a scripture 

are the only guarantees 

the congregation gets for free 



HERE ARE THE OPTIONS 

 

Here are the options 

swimming like Stygian piranhas 

in a siren-engineered terrarium 

of terminals and cul-de-sacs 

all campaigning for the ramrod thumb 

of your inexorable resolution 

There were bridges in the mix a time ago 

Feeble things whose support beams 

shrunk to weightless flakes in arrears of 

each advancing footstep 

As in a dance of purgatorial reincarnation 

you drowned in varied currents of regrets 

upon return to this dilemma 

Coward you were branded for your many deaths 

but your face conforms 

to the circumference of no mask 

Your naiveté refused to buy into 

your principle of a reciprocated altruism 

mercifully autonomous of character 

and greased the grip your run relied on 

for a favourable leap of faith 

and enthused approval on arrival 

Now you fear a future minus mainstream posture 

in the wake of all the rocky friction  

tattooed to your limbs upon escape from 

wedgings in the chasms separating 

the romanticism and disease of what you do 

Lacking your security-exuding pose 

you return to this mercurial vortex of options 

You have jettisoned the loose avowal 

that your instincts have not sold out 

to trial and error 

as a siren turns the tide and challenges 

your battered but unaided body to be entertained 

by fishing as it's never been before 



DESTINY'S SPADEWORK 

 

Miles and borders 

Wedges 

Wanderlust children 

locked in the Sun's hula hoop 

claim visions of sugarplum prairies 

Downplayed mountains 

speckle the globe 

like tectonic acne 

Topography's tease 

Dimensions spawn 

in the tatters of ambition 

like fused particles of 

colloquial bridges 

Keyboards sprout vocal chords 

and philosophies huddle under 

shy amusement 

humming to the hymn of a discovery 

wrapped up in the chords 

of enraptured fingertip choirs 



REAPER PROMPT 

 

Levitating like a liberated nightmare 

over desperate clutches of a limp mortality 

with jagged scythe channelling shark teeth 

spearheaded by a needled fin of fatalistic intent 

I scour catatonic instincts for an abscess of warmth 

in the grey folds shadowing his black essence 

(The faintest hope for a deciphering of weakness) 

A cape of flaming pitch wavers in the crackles  

of his path like the remnants of a live cremation 

A hood aflutter flirts with the status of 

a showpiece of excess in abyssal context 

of an antithesis of face or any human semblance 

susceptible to rationale's potential 

I’m frozen in a prostrate of vulnerable 

paleness pasted on my trepidation's stillness 

Never have I felt so hapless in mortality 

as his direction clarifies on an implied steed 

under his impeding festival of shape-shifting advance 

I am but a humble epilogue on human legs 

in the presence of an answer to the question 

pursued just enough to stay in a convenient ignorance 

There can be no doubt in this phenomenon 

I have found enlightenment in the darkest possibility

 





Steven Fortune is a resident of Sydney, Nova Scotia and a graduate of Acadia University (English Literature/History).  He has released five poetry collections to date, edited several works for others, and has also appeared on CBC Radio, while his work has been featured and read on several radio programs.  He also aspires to write for the stage and recently completed his first one-act play. 


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