A Wound in the Universe

I once wrote 31 poems in a single January. This was the 31st.

i found these words huddling together for warmth
in a sector of hell that the devil himself had to quarantine
after he couldn't get the unreasonably stubborn stains out
from the last party that Hendrix was ever allowed to throw down there.
but after years of suffering brimstone withdrawal, inbreeding,
and over-exposure to dangerously high levels of toxic euphoria,
they were less appalled by my disturbance than they had right to be.

i found them etched into one another's spines like some kind of syndrome,
but in lieu of spouting gossip and rumor about that which they had become,
they had frenzied themselves into a strain of propagandist cancer
to justify failures to cease to exist at more opportune moments than these.
and so it was at the conjunction of my own maladjusted wayward tendencies
and the auspices of their own reluctantly metaphysical incompetence
that i stumbled upon this brief conjecture on the anatomy of god.

i found soon after that this vertex of chance and destiny was a fickle one;
for even as these phantoms attempted to relay to me their garbled wisdoms,
the bends in reality that had granted me passage to this place were straightening
and the angles of light breathing life into my acquaintances were slanting anew.
sensing that some cosmic joker had grown weary of his own impressions of time,
i placed my gratitude and business card at the base of this monument to unbelief,
and not for a blink expecting any reciprocation or soulless attempts at reunion,

i found my way back to sleep.

Reviews

[arbitrary jane]

oh hell. or perhaps, oh... hell.
the linguistic paths here are the twisting hallways of perdition, flanked by crouching, slouching words, in various stages of contempt and spite and outright crawling, disease-pocked, writhing ill-will.
we shudder and are transfixed by the strange, huddled things in the dream of a dream dreaming of darkness... and gratefully catch a ride on that slanting light with you. back to the world of cars honking and streetlights and moving masses of men... but are a little affected by the new knowledge we possess of what is alive and scheming there below.
this may have been the word-drunk end of a long january, but sometimes the good stuff is in the bitter dredges.

[sherwin]

I dont think I need to go in great detail of my fondness for the subject matter and flow of this piece. I awarded you 2nd in my Free Verse Contest. There was something raw about you in this piece that I liked and I think I was more intrigued by your intelliegience and perception then the whole piece itself. It was all of it. It was the heart of it.

[roarke]

must have been a long month. Think cheese and onion sammich's for the insomnia relief....

each sentence a chapter. A master distiller of blanc lightening, held in a floral etched decanter.

everything becomes lucid after awhile doesn't it?

[Emily B]

were the other thirty half as stunning as this one?

[Seshat Nidaba]

Finally! A distinctive male poetic voice around here. Very contemporary yet edgy. There is a strain of nilhism in your work I find hard to place. This the kind of cosmic questioning that can be best written in the most formative philosophical years of youth. Bravo! There were several lines I enjoyed, for example: "and the auspices of their own reluctantly metaphysical incompetence
that i stumbled upon this brief conjecture on the anatomy of god."

[SOUL LESS]

I love the writer's description note :)

[Nobody.]

good stuff. I love "propagandist cancer" , "garbled wisdoms" and "cosmic joker" ...great word combos. The whole piece is very good. Abstract to a point, but still holding several meanings throughout and I love the end. well done.
Cheers!
R.G.