Delighted to have four poems published in the excellent Dreich Magazine Issue 6, June 2020. My thanks to its inspired editor Jack Caradoc. Love my four contributor copies. Well worth submitting to. https://hybriddreich.co.uk/dreich-6/

[image error]

THE SAMARITAN MACHINE

this field pond

is only my

dissolved

imagination-

thought drops

of summer rain

making fractal ripples

drumbeat on skin.

a portal shared

with cawing crows

reveals

who scams and snoops and shoots

in contract conversations.

this windsong

of Virginia Creeper,

ruling Bear and Wolfsbane

rustling in black bamboo

trusts its Samaritan Machine

telling it who to redact

in this imposed

dystopian

equilibrium

of dumbed-down masses

worshipping Carousel.

THE MAD HATTER HIDING IN DARK MATTER

in our house

i binned the radio

for playing Strauss-

left the suited rodeo

of casino Faust

and shot the gentry shooting grouse.

into the wild garden

without spun jargon

we went

through rusting arch of rose dissent

onto the precipice of peace

where slush borders grip and grease

like usurping techtonic plates

shapeshifting smaller states.

their innocents bombed and dispossessed

join our shoaled oppressed

of obedient possessed-

while The Mad Hatter

hiding in Dark Matter-

says blame them, instead of Strauss

in suits playing casino Faust

and enslaving gentry shooting grouse.

SUBMISSIVE IN SUB-HUMAN HERDS

everything

has its end

in its beginning-

so why pretend

expanding

to defeat-

we’ve made it bad

so just shag

with who you have

and eat.

never mind the fear

of being no one here

in the crowd-

the real nobody’s

are those somebody’s

grown large

in their mirage

and loud.

rise up. be true-

the land is green not blue

and they’ve stolen it from you

to shoot stags and birds

and ride over you with legal words

submissive in sub-human herds.

BOOTS OF HARLEY

this universe has no center

and you’re not there.

this sun is only sunny on the hood-

its light can’t bend more benter

to be fair

as time stops running rings in wood.

the floorboards creak

and pictures speak

when I stand in empty corners making room,

for ghosts that want to have my seat

when they come in from the street

after riding like Valhalla under sun and moon.

summer shoes,

with beards of barley

in their soley grooves-

still think they’re boots of Harley

on electro glide down highway avenues-

with a woman’s arms around my waist

singing Bob Marley

and promising me her taste.

foot down. legs braced-

rocking back the headboard on the bed and base

in the hanging of her breasts

where my head would rest,

her lips a vanished beauty of the past-

explode

unload

to this contrast-

that turns its empty pages in my head

unlit, as I lie in bed,

running out of Kerouac road-

i feel the beat

and go to sleep

with some more story told.

[image error]