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Joe Bradley Jan 2017
The moon dangled hard through the city
and the moth-lamps hummed discord with the wetness.
The dripping stars like accidents in spilt milk,
waited for a mop.

Walking home I hallucinated men
coiled up with the smoke-stacks.
They pressed through the brickwork and
as shadows flickered in the street-light.

Though my torch cut them down like saplings
and the moon ripped off their heads like scarecrows,
each man was a sermon,
a vastness straining the borders of sight.

A tailored uselessness hung there arms,
waspish currents tore from their mouths.
Starlings turned on their cross-wind,
as messengers of some sleeveless silence.

The moonlight fell on them like whorls,
like hurricane petals, hostile
were the shopsigns, they moved backhandedly.
The gulls raged. The crows filled silence they left.

The shadows all danced to the back of my head.
And when I turned they were gone.
I'm plucking for life and a body.
That shrinks the world to their size.
annh Aug 2019
Miss Dolly Dumpkiss
writes critiques backhandedly
while wearing nowt
more than her favourite French
perfume - L'Assassin
and a disingenuous
half smile. D'accord?

5-7-5-7-5-7-5
'Maybe the whole Internet will simply become like Facebook: falsely jolly, fake-friendly, self-promoting, slickly disingenuous.'
- Zadie Smith
maggie ann May 2020
A charm type thing,
Chin tucked and fetal
In a fidgeting palm served
Backhandedly the gaudy and the game,
Bearing almond ballads sealing
Enveloped crashes that call
Error only and only at the apex —

Send it over!
The donor, the coroner, the serve

Get a load of this —
Cyanide and benzy
Deem it immobile and unlucky,
Then drop it where it’s jammed
Twist out the backlash and the proof
With that hundred dollar rubber,
Salt off your poison strategy-threat

But here it is
A desolate grid

The injury is mitigated
After choking in the womb
Onoma 6d
Sunday can be as desperate as Napoleon
escaping from the island of Elba, on a
ship called: "Inconstant".
Factor in cold rain on the back of a winter coat, which can feel injurious.
As you backhandedly swipe to assess
seepage--a punitive glut that glazes your
hand, as if touch acts confused to ride out
reaction.
It's when your hand becomes the total
amount of precip your region received.
All of a sudden it's Sunday again--& I
observed the demographic plunge certain
major fast food chains take in sharing a
location.
No partition, just a judiciously open space
between two legendary counters.
That godawful defibrillator lighting stuck
to the ceiling.
Two distinctive sumtotal aromas that
run thru memories as firsts--somehow
refuse to coalesce, creating an aromatic
fissure.
This undoubtedly stimulates indecision
in customers, which sees a percentage
opting for both.
With the proviso that such diplomacy will
probably ruin the experience.
Or regretting the chain they purchased,
vice versa.
It's not like a food court, which's like a
stadium rock concert--where sound as
scent can get away from you.
It's an up close & personal concert.
That said, something about seeing a few
people eating alone on a Sunday had
such an anticlimactic sadness to it.
They appeared prolonged, adaptively rooted to what's designed to get them out.
They weren't going to leave until the
mindscape of a tray was worked out.

— The End —