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Joseph S C Pope Feb 2013
I

Wonderlandia, torn off the submerged lung
of a daydream diary.                   Reoccurs
as she does with silver eyes, weary Alice
during tea time--bullets burning past her
                                     like flowing nations.
Everyday similar tsunamis fund
                                     the lack of 20/20.
Nose to tail--the surge of angry engines
splits the ends of her blonde strands.
    Each one the last witness to maddening hospitality
--utopia never sweats as it talks and withers.
Amnesia blots,
new aspirin machines
vaporize apples and ***
on the other end of spectrum,
                                                     trans-positional labels--

Guillotine gargling teapots
       have no patience
         to the bushes of Olympus opiates
                                      bound in yellow barrier tape,
                     five o' clock traffic
               welcomes her back to what we are facing.


II


Dreary weather of late fall                       and her beautiful,
              powdered face

great mouth of atomic hell,
         when she speaks--80,000 deficiencies boil alive
                                                   --Trinity's teething test
                                                           on the tired bones
                                                   of a story-teller's raspy cards--

"None the wiser," she speaks,
                                "during the transition of ships
                   vermin turn into krakens culturing
                               on the surface of a raindrop.
    Heroes, villains, animals frozen together
                 after now eating for four days.
     The transition of one genocide
                                                        ­  to the other,
                the delineation of cat-and-mouse,
   mingle too long
   with the dead
   and its necrophilia."

                 Blind Alice wanders off the highway,
leaves her brewed cup of steamy static
on top of the unimportant saucer, sticks pins in her *******,
             and enjoys the sound of Cleopatra
             rolling over in reincarnation.


III

      Dear Alice smells
sunbathing, studded tangerines
                      assimilating liquor within the vast,
       empty, glowing nausea that is--
                        the warm germ

Oil                                    and                 ­          water
               rippled glass too silly for skulls
              made humid by distant salt water,

blood, acid, enzymes,
cheating probability
that runners with drunk kids
have blood between their toes.
                                                      Death­ to the distillation within
                                                    --the chronic diamond too polished
                                                       in *** to see the roses in her *****
    She curses these wood songs,
             heritage patriots with the pelts of wild lions
             with antlers over their heads,
                                                  faces advertising war paint
                                                applied by gargoyle hands
                    --sad memoirs always drink people
                                                  that use God as a cookie jar.


IV


  Gorgeous names
  on graffiti institutions give her a home
                                                         a market
                                                         a nickname
           still                  Alice only accepts Alice.

Grace periods where she misses tyranny
                  rise and fall like endorsed breathing.
    Now Alice feels her dress fall off,
                                  extinct years message future occupancy
                                  about what to wear.
New era, this era, past eras plead guilty
in a      clinic museum
             of forcing demons
              down the medical
              throats
of first graders. Court adjourns at 9:01 PM, Saturday

             The populus can sleep now,
                          but not her.
                 No one gave her clothes
                 to cover up the drained monochrome.


V

Instead she celebrates her flesh,
                                        the broken glass,
   and quakes and leads off to expose
           others to its potential vital prosperity.

         Instead
                     headlines like bumper cars read
                     about the beheading of weeks,
                     failing rescue missions,
                     and debates on teenage tolerance.

Nicotine intoxication points Alice
to over-extended memories--wards of music
sequenced to point out the extinction of marble tigers.
                        Only 550 expected to understand
                         tethered to millions able to survive.

  Flood waters look at moral standards, a mean hurricane
                                   that collapses the death toll
     all patented 50 states
     have a dating service
     and huff paint as a way
                              to pray to art.
                                                      Double­-canvas faces
                                                      dyed in pixel     hope
                                                       that the media levees hold,
             but volunteer to herd sheep into poppy seed fields.
                                            She refuses to stay,
                    to watch the long night
                    of castration on men with mud-covered ankles.
                                      Television says eunuchs want
                                       to be prodigal's children,
                                       everyone wants to come back home
                                       to mom and dad, safe zones, away
                                       from themselves.
                                                     ­                 It says our ancestors want
                                                            ­          this for all of us. They worked
                                                          ­            so hard to tie up the hair
                                                            ­          out of Aphrodite's face.

                                     They treasure the silver eyes of Alice,
                                          but call them blue,
                                                  they issue her high cholesterol
                                          but pump sweet ****** into he stomach,
                                                  they tell her to put down the drill,
                                            so she can finish their orchestra--

her lightning
    is
     a
  string
     of
  souls



VI


     She decides to depart Sunday,
to discover the ordinary beginning,
                        painting WHY? on its delirium.
re-arrangeable viewers become
                      inserted sounds under percussion and piano.

       Caging various important charts
                                          undetermined
   ­                           as finished attention.
                                                      ­              Three movements in flux
open end the people                     vacuuming
                            craftsmanship blocks
                   from                                dogs and zen.

                                                 The
                                 suspended letter               is happening in 1951
   drenched in existential white                                            spacing
        ­                                                   the viewer
                        from integrated architecture.

Down
the
bell is a structure called
"the quarantined wheelchair."
                               Dead ignorance changes pattern
                               after six movements of the second hand.
Alice speaks, "To you all, know
                                       that this is an un-dramatic situation.
          Everyday windows with the same
           participants have girls drinking
                                                     orange juice, activate fluid,
                    both exist as objects
                    and caught propaganda."

                                                   ­                      Six tunnel
                                                          ­      audiences are watching
                                                        ­        drown in the plastic silk
   her                                                       built by the motorized collage
                                                         ­                                        spider.

          Alice, a kinetic mannequin pop star
                        is limp in the glass point.
             Rhythmic flux is objectified war torture
                         censored in fitness magazines
by simple toilet literature.

                                        Six tunnels worth of eyes
                                 latch to the *******
                                           as a way to bury **** protesting.
                                  A coat of pepper spray
                                   works in front of the exhibition.
This stage is shaded by moans.


VII


      Alice the female, has a door-to-door friend
                                                          ­    over the sea
of the cathedral's ceiling               who died of disemboweled
pulchritude             at the mutilated nuclear other-place.
                     Her friend was a synthesized example
                     of staged catastrophes. Her friend is her, silver-eyed
                                                     ­                                             Alice.

            ­                     She performs herself and herself
                                 but they are played by polished, scored poets.

Everyone of them incorporates the events
                                 of a dancing gunshot. Everything rests
                                                           ­ at an intermission

               but after fifty minutes of pondering,
          the lost audience remembers
         her name is Alice.
                   So it comes back on with a shower of sweat
                  and this clear
                                  substance
               ­                                 called
                         ­                              patience.
       This composing, peering vulnerability
                        psychologically destroys the flux tension
              like analog genocidal dictators.
                                   Ultimately this is dream liquor

     commentating war to the war tree
      using trauma and chairs as humor.



VIII


               Patience on the water level lives translucent
                                            on networks that brand flesh
                                            with displaced identity.
Alice convinces us all that pickled ***
                                                             ­               takes eight years
                     to ****** and we accuse it
                                         of being fake. Afterwards, her character dies
in confident silence.


IX


     Not majestic, but she does cough
                  to mock the earth.
        The seeds of Alice are ripe,
                        harvested early, and now her children come out and dine
        like speaking tongues on gibberish.
                          The room is fat with hair

and kindness. Feeble, mundane hands chew on each other,
                                                         feet stand proud.
We even call her Alice or "the beautiful *******,
                                             a black cloud feasting
                                             in orange."
                       Everyone feasts on the nectar
                                                         she has, but never the rye
which makes her round. Juice is squeaking and her children laugh
                         as in competition.

     It's a distinguishable game as the mixed
                                                           ­      couple up front
              begin to play whistles as
                                         everyone eats
                   the pride of the silver-eyed Alice's children.


X

                                                ­ The children's souls
                                                       bow and say
                                           "Thank you for barely growing."
                                                   and dissipate after five minutes.

          "Curiouser                                   ­                                      and
           Curiouser"                                                       ­                   they
           say                                                              ­                        as
           they                                                             ­                       leave
           this                                                             ­                         homage.
                  The decimal backbone
                     of each of sweet Alice's
                                   blonde strands
                   divorced by the gust/ of a green light's/ allowance.


XI Epilogue*


  The day crawls away
                   a vigilant pest
     of the nocturnal project
                   --suns beam down still, like
                  stomachs of grinning felines
                           at Valentine's day.

toxic-dyed fingers
                        soldered
to bodies pittering across rainy streets

--legionnaires with hearts on stones
                         we are waiting for her orders,

     thistled-teeth clench,
                                         but did she
                                          actually
          ­                                ever come?
Joseph S C Pope Feb 2013
the recycled song
that repeats in the throats of the lovers that came so many times
they were invisible on death's radar for just one night. Is it possible
                                                        ­                  for the same two people
                                                          ­                to live in that kind of
                  perpetual amazing-ness?

                  A white flag of surrender in the nose of scolding lips--her lips--those wonderful lies.
The best beard no one will forget. That last sentence makes no sense
                           without the breakfast it went down with. My eggs over well, the bacon still moist with grease, the toast over golden, the grits sloppy, the hashbrowns like a fried sandwich. I need a fantastic cup of coffee.                                                          ­              with her perfume. I'm not sure
                      if I am what she wants, but the alcohol in the
wine I had for                                                              ­            New Years still lingers in my throat.
                                                  
                                                I still feel the burn of loss in my esophagus. The white banner starboard,
blood in my teeth and an opera on my fingers--
what a beautiful world for this day to begin on                and this night to end on. I am a man
and                                                          ­               woman
My feet are hairy--my heart is bruised and young,               like crossed lovers in heels and breeches.

                             The faith of a white flag--a serpentine
                             coast in my suitcase. The world awaits,
                             death can wait--and thanks to Hemingway,
I begin, end, and live my life around the word
                                                            ­                       'and'.
Joseph S C Pope Feb 2013
2012, the year that was supposed to end                           our race
                                                --a water-line for the universe
                                                  that apparently doesn't care.
      In the tally on the wall and the chalk that makes it up there is the reverence to cultivation
of change--fear.  It was this fear I felt all 365 days that caused my arteries
                                   to ***** and my blood to accelerate. Fear caused pain
and love and both of them in hind view are venomously magnificent. I may be a descendant
                       of primates,
                       maybe--but I met my hope by the ocean. Leaving messages in the sand
for passers and onlookers. It is wonderful how the sound
                                             of the ocean--a voice--a warning--a heartbeat keeps us alive.
Joseph S C Pope Feb 2013
Calm these rabbits around the spirals
          the *** is still in my wind pipe
and the morning will be late till spring.

         Screeching lightbulbs rewind impatience
------The naked nuisance is scrubbing into your nebula.

Hands that helped us into the pit
            Beware       them
                                            again

Popping trophies and other autobiographies
coil into soda cans like strange theories.
                     objects    objects
                   everywhere you go

                faster. slower. pause.
                revival. tow. exhaust.
Joseph S C Pope Feb 2013
I want to see where nice words are used on young ladies.
                      ****** Rome of rude-bred heights from the balcony of the city of dynamite.  The villagers sacrifice their seven pounds of worry, and sleep like children in caves of textile reactors. Souls packed in coins and gasoline sin are sold hot at the bazaar on a University campus in America. What the **** do these lambs do in societal gardens? What the hell do pets know watching letters drizzle from the clouds? Parcel dreams scattered on foster children--I want to know where all our words for niceties went when we paid the women to be young.
                                                                      Devils make knees slick
                                                                   barbwire anacondas bless our country
                                                   write a laugh--write a song--and we will all work it out

                       We--used as a rapier to categorize the salt in vigorous blood flow--the bells, the bells of centuries worth of midnights. I--the edited cobble in roads that precipitation breaks in stride. Hearing the  rambles of lucky men in the next room, but I know young ladies don't kiss and tell to friends they find effeminate, they rupture and explode. And laugh. And laugh. And laugh. And laugh with squeaky voices as true as poetry. Now they mumble till they are paid.
                                       But you--are no *******, just an empty glass with chunks of broken accents skipping deadlines in life, for new deadlines in life. Abstract puzzle pieces resemble therapy that burns the interrupted wick in--you.  
   But as for--them--they--or others--delirium commercializes whispers aching the back of their tonsils till there is no relief, but coin to pay for more coin that will pay for more coin. Relief is in another language they refuse to learn because they are arrogant.

Cats scowl at one in the morning for attention, nails anchored in carpet, the rest of us are tired by the week of spending. They want more, more, more--till the gates in your eyes open.
Joseph S C Pope Feb 2013
In seasons we sprout,
dressed to the nine
                               in compliments under
flocked skies of abandoned webs. The jaws of breeding

snapped shut
around the ankles of his inky blue wingtips
                                    her glossy leopard skin high-heels.

Forgive us tree of knowledge, we have recreated you
                        fonder in the image of a concrete rose,
a bull freed from its matador,
a thorn on the vinyl to cycle the serenade.

Please listen--envy the blister silence,
it sweats in the mind of the innocent.
The days of milk and fruit are over.
We are ready to depart the branches of thee,
                            feel the glassy snow beneath our feet
Joseph S C Pope Feb 2013
The driver wears a clock
with a hat
and it tips in favor to the newest customers
twice a day.
It drives a bright orange cab
delivering backseat baptisms
to the patients walking across the flat-top abyss at night.

I see the cab roll up beside me
and its only one step to get in but, flights of stairs are truly there.
Judas with three hands invites me forward to sit down
but, he starts shouting in tongues and all I hear is something
about shoebox pupils.

The weather in the cab isn’t inviting,
it believes in me though
and hands me a paper bag to ***** the obnoxious ticks
away, leaving an empty stomach for fair elements.

I hear my stomach quote: “I am the egg,
a sack of an embryo
of culture and ******,
chairs open doors for me.

You are the prized treasure
of the spider’s remain bag.
Bleaching light is afraid
of you.”

The driver then says with solid breath,
“Jukebox oven needs only one more
piece of our lives.
It promises with frigid fingers and leftover voices
that swamps will always run under us.
So we do as conscience demands, we pay the fare
and believe that is fair.
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