CATENATING IN PUBLIC
Caught on the corner
As processional silence
Ghosts from one mourning phase to the next,
How many crucifixions to go?
Last man teetering
pays a Mind-Man
for answers,
sent to the corner with placards,
paying penance in IOU’s,
paying Peter the pipe-bomber to
be his avenger,
avenging
what,
no-one is quite certain
DOING IT OVER YOUR HEAD
Landscapes pour
from tributaries of wistful road songs,
All decayed-decline perpetually behind us,
Eroded into grit atop blacktop,
Rivers of bold storeyed-lives flow
Like mercury in a heat haze,
Beckoning the rueful red rose,
Tan a-brown coppery
Short-stay and bronzed by time
Unburdening in full light,
Walking thru amber framings,
Writ in primal tongue orally set in refracting cheek,
Bobbling in speech balloons
Way over your head, deep in the ground!
This blog is the successor to the poetry section of the now no longer existing The Argotist Online. Send submissions to argotistonline@gmail.com. Due to the large number of submissions, only those accepted can be replied to.
Poem by Stephen Bett
Novel Lines 101: 101 alphabetical poems, each riffing on the opening line of a postmodern novel or metafiction. Antonio Lobo Antunes, Act o...
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A NOTE ON THE MANDRAKE The irregular black bands down its side allow a small force to over- come a larger one. Otherwise it is blue, & d...
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SEA, ME, & LIBERACE A school of Patagonian toothfish have given me a candelabra for my saint’s name day. I’ve placed it on the grand pia...
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BROADCAST NOISE Not shot full of skittering beasts said someone — or was it beats? Or was it the Titanic that really sank or some similar si...