Five Poems by Mike Zone

 

The crown

Gaslit amerikans made to feel weary

UK feeling the same kind of pain

born of revolutionary notions along blood soaked cerebral highways

old concepts

within a different window of time

clinging to the evolutionary ways of ancient psychopaths

celebrate

the family

who slaughtered

everyone else

give them precious jewels

a fancy chair

adoration

let them dole out

selective charity

sound familiar coming from across the pond?

Fuck the coronation

Fuck the inauguration

of decaying narcissistic machinations

kissing the ring of compartmentalized rights

bread and circus

worship the bloated

the bejewelled

the master class

faces marked by stagnant rot

vintage poison

scarlet dreams

fogging the mind of a self-defeatist myth

you need us

no, we don’t

fuck the coronation

feed the poor

before world’s end

burn this entire system down

apocalyptic desire

marks your ultimate end

 

 

Social distortion

My friend shakes my hand while pissing on my leg, 20 years of running off with over a thousand borrowed dollars- talking shit right in front of me at a record store reading

“I used to be somebody”

You’re not

Anymore

the talent you had

wasted

knocking up strippers in a single bound

punching parking meters

after dark

rattling door knobs

it’s all you got

 

my ex girlfriend kissing my cheek while going to the gym and bar without me delivering a thousand solid excuses, won’t let me end it with her-drags it along another 63 days trying to be a ghost with a lack of haunt held up against a metaphorical confessional

“I’ve been dating someone else for a while, we have a deeper connection”

Intimacy wise

Doesn’t work out

Calling me 4am drunk

something about miserable without me

just another empty narc

afraid to take a leap of faith

chasing steroid gym-rat dreams

until one almost killed her

goes back for more

 

my old man dying inside since my mom died, killing himself to live in the adversity of being a cancer-prancer- thinks he might have to get a dishwashing job if they stop sending out social security checks- I see our minds have switched places  where one goes for solace when I had none sleeping under over-passes

but it’s okay

now…

all of you have your own distortions to contend with

entangled barbed-wire lamentations

social fabric

phantom thread

venom structure

unweave the bright coloured spectacle

societal gaslighting

you can do anything

think positive

 

 

Train of thought

(dedicated to Ana Lept)

god is rainbow

fading ever so slightly

barely dazzling bright futures

chasing into forever despair with no pot of gold in sight

QUEENS BOUND

M TRAIN

there’s no royalty here

but peasant passengers sifting through shit and slime just to breathe enough in order to abstain from suicidal tendencies

wayward immortal soldier hops on

kicks off his boots

meticulously rolls a blunt

pays no mind

blessing in annihilation

leave him alone

he’s scared

nah…

just exhausted by paradise lost divine comedy bullshit

latter stages of eradication

worn out by fear

destination

unknown

radical acceptance

your fate

yearning to deviate from the reaper’s sickle

hope eternal

in the midst

of manufactured sunshine

“STAND CLEAR OF CLOSING DOORS”

 

 

Dreaming blue

Much like a Lynch film, it’s where one belongs to die awakening into a surrealistic existence more real than real

reality bitten

orange car crashes don’t bleed into the mind anymore via new york pop-art mafia overlords

Warhol can go home with his diary of “a”

War-holes

god shaped with dead photos stray images booze pills and whatever else you want to fill it with

the cum of strangers in a darkened room meditating over records that’s kind of blue

can’t let this dream end

star struck sky

even if it’s just a black cloth with light bulbs alone leave the razorblades in your suitcase the cosmos need be left alone to breathe sunset and exhale divine nocturnal drives in our blue sedan

not feeling quite all that blue

nearing the precipice of something kind of blue

in your blue shirt

do you have blue eyes upon a midnight clearly?

Something said

Possibly

Unwarranted

she takes her shirt off

anger frustration

whatever

a streak of blue light

in the darkest night

it’s 3:48am.

And I’m blue

sullen hearted

at the dream of you

this dream not transpiring with you

not continuing this dream

blue note

two hours of sleep

in two days

grey skies

looking blue

would flip the blues man a quarter if I could but instead on the corner I hand a joint and cup of coffee

perhaps not as blue

as before

 

 

Peninsula Gardens

In Peninsula Gardens

we hang

by a thread

something fierce

razoring away

a cutting wind

 

in Peninsula Gardens

we eat

the ass

of Chinese cross-dressers and the pussies of speed-balling strippers turned clumsy bartenders with the same zeal as holy fascists bombing abortion clinics

kicking the homeless

in the teeth

amen

 

in Peninsula Gardens

at the centre of it all

west michigan

is the bible-belt

of the north

 

in Peninsula Gardens

we sell legal weed

but pull you over

soon as we can

for making your own choices

praising

the jingoistic meek

giving

a free pass

to the drinking class

right

left

centre

all

authoritarian

Mike Zone is the former Editor in Chief of Dumpster Fire Press and managing editor of Concrete Mist Press.  

The author of Screaming in the End: Poems and Stories, Fuck You: A Fucking Poetry Chap, Shedding Dark Places (almost), One Hell of a Muse , as well as coauthor of The Grind and Razorville.  

A frequent contributor to Alien Buddha Press and Mad Swirl. His work has been featured in: A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Black Shamrock Magazine, Horror Sleaze Trash, Better Than Starbucks, Piker Press, Punk Noir Magazine, Synchronized Chaos, and Cult Culture magazine.