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Lollipop ~ Katja Faith

If the words of my heart
By Tesla coils or otherwise
Induce
A reaction in you
In the core of your flame

Then I am made more
In Beardsley curlicue or otherwise
Embellished
Tattooed tongue-tied
In the core of your flame

Ape X

Dusso

This gleaning ape, wide awake to all he thinks he feels
Dead to romance tied to voyeurism
Questions carved in passing, biting at his heels

This scheming ape that treasures all his broken things
Rusted toys and tarnished optimism
Severed locks of amber hair and tattered apron strings

This dreaming ape, fast asleep behind the steering wheel
Cushioned in his private symbolism
Answers cast in caste encased in hurtling steel

Leviathan

Big Fish ~ Michael Hutter

Now to the mast
Lashed and moon-lit arrested
I tag these notches on my bones
Count the rings of petals flower fallen
She loves me
She loves me not
She…
Not in floral wrath or knotted ropes of rain
Or councils keen where never king shall reign
But through leaves of painted pages
Spines all gone now confined to cages
These ribs of steelwork hull enrole
The sheets that sail unsure on titan seas
Rivet-gunned the rope-trick to my soul
And sent your thoughts to me
To bid me lift my eyes above the waves
And sail upon the reef’s knife edge
Index link my fingers to the stars
Orion, Orion, Arcturus
Tack and turn into the biting wind
Knife the surface tension now to find
Leviathan slumbers neath my cleaving keel

Little Argument with Myself

"there's nothing as sad
as a man on his back
counting stars"
~ Low

Limbic Phantoms/Phantom Limbs

And constellations reel their predictive matrices
Above the myriad minds in sleep set free
Hydrad haunts the slate roof skyline
Full moon feral the calling of her ancestral mothers
To set the world to rights
In increments of feathers

And dreams of stars and swirling galaxies of peace
Compose great symphonies in ether mist
Individual notes picked out insemiotic
And thread together necklaces for ancestral mothers
To set the world to rights
In jigsaw pieces pondered

And falling yet through floors of splintered silence
Mind meanderers spread their mattress arms
Embrace the morning rituals unthought
And wide-eyed wash away the fears of ancestral mothers
To set the world to rights
In menial tasks of civil duty

Idiot's Attic

H.R. Giger

I’m running these numbers
For the pharmaceutical gods
For the children of the fog
And the depression dealers
With manic concessions
Oppressed between pages
And comedic impressions

I’m asking all these questions
Of my hair-shirt headstone
Of your left-hand life-line
Whose tooth-marks are these?
Pocking vampire moon sorrows
With Frankenstein craters
And werewolf tomorrows

I’m sweeping this pathway
For the time-traveller’s hushpuppies
For the pink-gummed piranhas
and ragged-tooth hippies
Arriving in warm ignorance
At the academy of lies

And the carnivores advance
In the shade of Mount Venus
Where they prey on the meek
Where they drown in the fountain
Of love’s fevered reprieve
Or entwine in the stitches
Of a heart-encrusted sleeve

I’m taking these steps
For the counting of paces
For the wolf at the door
Through streets yellow leaf-littered
Where un-drowned litters of orange cats stray
Mew at the gates of plastic institutions
Where the manufacturers of truth hold sway

I’m pulling out a chair
At the breakfast of horrors
At the pages of lies where the ink never dries
But I gag on the meal
Force-fed without ethics
Paranoid fantasies
Dead minds for the hack
Morning doorways cluttered
Outlined and arrayed
...in a 100 shades of black

Fables from a Forgotten Place: Utopia

Europa ~ Jacek Yerka

The people of Somewhere live their lives under the intangible weight of a deep sense of loss. They are of an industrious nature and little can distract them from their dedication to their labours, a fact that leaves them little time to ponder on what this feeling means or whether it is worth worrying about at all, perhaps coming to the conclusion that the feeling is a natural by-product of an industrious life.
It seems, therefore, that this loss is not something that they are conscious of, it is merely a fact of their lives; an integral part of their daily existence; the sort of thing that would only be noticed if suddenly removed.

If there is one certainty in a society such as Somewhere, constituting as it does a major portion of the planet, (the remainder consisting of those elements regarded “consumable”, being important for the betterment of a society that prides itself as being industrious) it is the fact that the smallest change may cause a ripple large enough to effect all elements and strata of that society.
To be fair to the individual citizens of Somewhere it must be stated that they are a docile, trusting and, some would say, gullible lot, not often given to the rather complicated process of making judgement on those who present (and represent) the plans for the betterment of their society.
It is thus that Somewhere is run, in a very sensible manner, with little chance of any but the most catered for changes and with the apparent approval of all of its citizens, by a small core of policy-makers whose task it is to keep the citizens’ industrious nature satisfied with ever greater tasks whose ultimate goal is to satisfy the harvest of the consumable elements so important to the betterment of their society.

In a society such as that practised by the industrious citizens of Somewhere there is little chance that the intangible sense of loss will cause ripples capable of having any effect on what is, after all, a perfectly adequate existence

The Far Queue Recommends: Keep Breathing ~ The Durutti Column

Dali's Egg ~ 16. Epilogue

You Are Here

He awoke with a start when the train jerked and slowed as it entered the station; the screech of steel against steel; the hissing release of pressurized steam. He dusted the crumbs of sleep from his chest and straightened his tie as the conductor thumped his way past in the corridor.
“Markov! Next stop Markov!”
Through the grimy window John gazed out at the passing platform awash with people; expectant faces; he was taken by the grey light which forced colours to strain their way through – the deep red in the paisley pattern on a woman’s scarf, the dark blue uniform of an overworked porter. The train had slowed to walking pace and he read the ornate sign as it passed the window of his compartment:

MARKOV - 53.4N 62.7W

He stood and lifted his jacket from the hook on the back of the sliding door. Standing before the mirror thus revealed, he shrugging into the jacket and lifting the hat from the wooden bench that had flattened his arse for what felt like a century, he placed it on his head.
His eye took in the man in the mirror – the suit was dark and the black eye patch hung from the brim of the hat, the grey goatee was neatly trimmed, each hair an individual. He adjusted the tiepin, rubbing a finger over the elongated fried egg wrought from silver and gold, and buttoning the jacket he turned to lift the heavy Gladstone bag down from the rack above the bench.
The train reached a surprisingly gentle halt as he slid the door open and joined the thronging corridor, the bag held up before him. The fat woman in the dark floral hat held the handle with one white-gloved hand as she descended the steps to the platform, giving him a sniffy look as she did so. John waited for her to move away before descending. He stepped out as the chill wind gusted down the platform carrying an orange leaf across the heads of the crowd. He could feel, through the leather soles of his shoes, the hum of the gravity machines.
The black uniformed policeman gave John the eye as he passed through the turnstiles and down the stairs to where the taxis swallowed passengers.

T E R M I N U S

Memento

Photo by Evan Jake Cohen

He passes from the warmth of the interior to cold sunshine.
The stilled engine ticks away its excess heat, returned to inanimate.
He stretches his legs beside the road, feeling the earth revolve beneath him.
Deep green Fir offer their tips to paint the pale sky blue.
His breath condenses in the air – silent words from foreign dictionaries.
She smiles at him from behind the sky’s reflection.
He feels his life at the nexus of his ribs and raises the camera to capture.
She blocks his view of her face with a raised hand against the intrusion; the illusion.
The children stir from strapped-in sleep, irritated within the car’s warm cocoon.
There is no traffic here; they are alone in the universe.