Sta.sh
Year II - Issue XLVII
Volume XCIX
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Last issue before celebrating 100!
11. memoryI know my past by
the invisible scars that dot my memory –
evidence of open brain surgery
(that maps what's been carefully removed,
then isolated and forgotten.)
Life is a road with many forks
but all lead off the edge of a
precipice.
Don’t ask me why –
it just is, okay?
“Look at all these choices!”
[Not important, I mean.]
Most of my days are consumed by
the impractical marker of the
current end of my history.
(Most of the time I
call it a pain in the neck,
but sometimes I just call it
the ‘present’.)
- a biased introduction to one thing or another.
VanilleA delicate blossom seducing the senses
The subtle aroma recalls secluded beaches and a full night sky...
It quietly drips and pools on the tongue
A velvet sensation
Intoxicating
Lush
Decadent...
It whispers lovingly in gossamer ribbons
...A gentle caress of fingers feather light along the spine
It beckons with promise
Petals gracefully fall on a lone silver spoon
procedureMidazolam
the formula for amazement: a rare pollen from the surplus field
where horses haven’t grazed since April’s warm orgy
left a bindweed pink disease,
unrepenting against chainlink,
nights spent foraging for a spectre to grieve over,
to watch for while it elevates and descends
like a dumb waiter serving sunlight
to jealous little bastards, birthed and trailing in umbilicals,
sleepy, glass-eyed hydras
who never listen to anything,
uninvolved in my tiny drama,
the feeling of losing my treasured afflictions,
the mythos that fastens the concrete to dirt,
the wind to my spirit-skin,
is dulling the edges of the skyhead
regret in seven stagesi. attraction
when my negativity finally
found something beautiful,
charged up like a bipolar
thunderstorm waiting to come
crashing down
(you were everything
i ever wanted and i
was entirely selfish) then
ii. simplicity
like the way our hands fit perfectly
together and how we’d sway
to rhythms that never existed;
your eyes were a springtime day
decades before we were born and
happiness became an instinct
instead of a defense [until]
iii. commitment
like a jail sentence worn
around the neck. spine
contorted and screaming
bound too quickly by the uns
and nots and fear you never
quite kept at bay, we were
guilty of so much but
Hubblethe space between stars
in the night sky,
an eyelash's breadth,
contains billions of whirling
galaxies, lightless regions,
breathless clumps of dark matter
and other unimaginable mysteries.
and this reminds me of you.
RelicI. It's a drugstore night
In a sundown town
The background is
That long, low sound.
Which moans across the
Windswept plains
Hear the grass sighing
Neath' halcyon blue.
Softly treading o'er the stars
Nightingale eyes peer
Into my sunbleached soul
Relic of ash and smoke.
II. Cities gleam
Burning copper in
Evening sunlight
Glass facades become
Technicolor mirrors
As lines of clouds
Trundle to their trains.
Whisking them away to lonely castles
The trains run on and on
Humming their electric lullabies
That no mother ever sang.
III. Neon sign spitting sparks
On the rainy pavement
Umbrella-wielding denizens
Passing by...
Where are these sou
Cascading DarkThis sensation persists in my heart.
Lingers like a stubborn bitterness on the back of the tongue.
Distantly foul, yet so familiar I can’t remember a time when I didn’t taste it.
It’s cold and synthetic.
Mathematical and metallic.
Yet I find myself fantasizing about it tasting organic and sweet.
[ Mandarin honey in the place of corroded steel. ]
Though I am unable to convince myself,
and the same taste, the same fear, settles back into me.
The fear that to you, thoughts of me are tasteless.
Neither sweet nor bitter, but rather clear and empty as pure water.
A manifestation of complete nothingness,
While here I am lo
ethics.my hands aren’t calloused enough.
someone told me recently that
a solid work-ethic comes not from
enjoyment, but from a counterfeit pride
carved deep within oneself, the ultimate,
bold-faced lie you force yourself to believe
in, after you finish your evening prayers
and tuck yourself in for the night.
so, i took it to heart and tried to remedy
the situation by lifting without sighing:
i realize the origin of my anxieties now.
there is no referee in this game,
i am either biting my nails, pulling my
skin, skidding down hallways pursued
by monsters only i can see,
or i am numb.
there is no in between.
but my hands still aren’t cal
The Man and the MoonHer mouth corners hung themselves
and I began to wonder if that was the death of them.
A simple, quiet death;
without broken fingernails lining the walls
with the stripes of a despairing end.
I began to ache with the questioning in my heart
with the echoes reverberating in my capillaries
of her face scorching sunshine in her smile
right before it crumpled
and nothing was left but a frowning moon
set firm in its resignation to an upcoming eclipse.
Valium SunshineValium airstrikes in the sunlight,
and the mentally vulnerable dance to
velvety nocturnal sins and bliss in
grenadine waves through and through.
They aggressively move through this
thing called life, floating in opiate clouds
and drastic deals on street corners to
balance the checkbook in swears so loud.
But we two have found better things to
drown our sweet lungs in, blindly iridescent
silver smoke choking our logic for the
real world, with its politics and antidepressants.
Imagination.
Starlight, bright starshine drapes over the
marble balcony of dreams we have, quickly
releasing our inhibitions with needle
injections of inspiration sh
Dry Spell I am immobilized by time.
by the idea that it is somehow slipping,
fleeting,
evaporating
through the cracks of
my fingers and high
above my head.
I am terrified by the incessant notion
that no combination of thoughts,
words,
silences,
or actions
could possibly satiate it.
I realize only now that it can never be filled:
all which is tossed into it is swallowed in haste
or stretched
so far
that it dissolves into non-being.
I find that I am caught within its furrows
much like the words it devo
Phanerozoic lately i've had a certain thought stuck in my brain,
the thought of how easily i can change my fate.
retrospectives play and replay a silly habit embedded in me
like fossils rested in subsoil,
like little insects trapped in golden amber,
like gems cased in by stone:
i wait until its too late to open up.
by then, i've just learned to make myself comfortable.
i imagine how beautiful i could be if i opened up like gardenia.
i make promises to myself that things will be different next year,
that
Dinner For TwoThe bushes are still but never vacant.
Within their shadows I’m lurking.
Watching you much more closely than the other gazelle.
I’ve always wanted to have you for dinner.
But this game of cat and mouse has rage war for far too long.
And Jerry still has higher winning streak than Tom.
Why can’t we forgot our duties as predator and pray in the animal kingdom?
Setting aside our fangs, horns, claws, and hooves.
While picking up the forks and chops sticks.
Because I’m an outlaw that left his carnivorous heritage.
So the same food chain could link us together for life.
Just give me one dinner for two to show you a meal yo
expectationI am not ready to grow up,
but dissonant chords, memento mori,
and the date of my birth
clamour at my senses
abusive, aggressive, morose -
I wonder how other people
put childish notions away
in order to be polished,
in order to be sophisticated,
in order to feel the same
and
I wonder
why they want to.
compositionshe fell in love with words, never people-
people breathe and run and can cut her to the bone;
they're dangerous, deadly, violent,
but it was people that she knew best.
--
i am made of little, brittle bird bones and shattering skies,
i've got the skin of snakes, of wilting flowers,
of broken mirrors without the shine,
i'm trying to be a bit more honest,
but it's not like you can tell the difference between
my endless melodies and the vindictive, cutting words
that roll from my mouth-
they're not that much different.
Strangeness and CharmsThere’s a girl.
(There’s always a girl)
She’s quiet and silent, not daring to speak.
The class is filled with angry voices and wicked words,
But she bears the pain within the stillness.
They don’t see her.
(Because they never see her)
She’s swimming within the confusion,
Kicking wildly against the misery.
She doesn’t waste her seconds tapping at plastic keys,
But bangs her afternoons away at a piano,
Daring the world to disturb her peace.
But the world never hears,
And that’s fine with her.
(They never see the beauty until it’s too late)
She paints her toenails neon,
And streaks her
The MeteorologistShe’s stretched
as thin as the air in the stratosphere
and her rain
she catches in a great tin can,
pocked with holes,
but they make a music
when they slide down the sides.
And sometimes,
on summer days,
I can still hear chimes
but the sky’s as still as her eyes.
prairie handsyou focused east and
bathed in sundrips,
took one look
towards the west
and crumbled
it.
you kept your head
forward and your gaze slipped
not, for these columns
do not shake.
and your gait sank,
and you sang.
you kept up
the best of
arcs and adorations,
latent heel
in active aspiration,
but had not
the grace for this
escape.
and with your hymn
you courted dusk.
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