Peter Magliocco: Five

The Eclipse of Love

 

 

Take back the light

from the face of time

& what do you get?

The same whiners

wondering where all

the action goes to make

the earth revolve around the sun

 

until everything is illuminated

by a natural truth, sans

all the internet experts.

Like photosynthesis every day

 

for all living things --

 

but somehow humanity avoids it,

preferring an unnatural blindness.

That comfort of lies & illusions

so cleverly bundled into

a daily regimen of speakeasy spiel.

 

The whore who is my wife on Thursdays

drinks to all this, knowing the twilight of truth

is the best refuge to hide naked in

 

as her bruises slowly fade

& implanted breasts implode

into that suborbital dysfunction of being,

 

darkening

my unseen

hell.

 

 

 

 

I Don't Need Microwaves Down in New Orleans

 

 

 

Now I have abolished prejudice

from the skin I once wore

over a retinal blemish,

breathing airs of righteousness

with my morning coffee,

espying an aboriginal goodness

even in weeds nourished by sun

still casting thin shadows.

 

Yet darkness lurks still

around the flooded kitchen I strut in,

a chef for cannibal fare.

Preparing my potluck survivor's supper

it reminds my feathery hands too

of untouchable stains.

A hubris we see in lives troubled

by dead neon's encroachment,

 

what brings morning down

from pale solar eyes

cooking us.

 

 

 

 

Droid

 

 

 

All things in due time, she announces.

"When the elements of ague consume us

The last martyr will confront you,"

Pointing to a broken clock face

Behind which mold slowly grows.

The minute hand hangs as God's teardrop.

Will you sing at my liberation? she asks.

I swore I saw her years ago, perhaps

in a dream spoiled by sleeplessness.

When we were both texting at mid-terms?

But now recognizing my female double

threatens my manhood's last vestige.

She tells me that I'm her "sex robot,"

expensively made by digital engineering,

& she's been waiting a long time for me.

"Hi Jesus," she purrs, kissing my cheek.

 

 

 

on Buk's birthday, 1994

 

 

 

oyster pearls toll on tongues of deceivers

aging through the long night

of Hollywood malaise

no one dances yet to the funeral march

of Rock stars, there is no truth

but the holy lie told (again

& again) by the chiefs of state

searching for sex tapes

implicating all in media treason,

someone must light a candle

before dawn unfolds now

over the striated corpus

perfunctory literature becomes

in the wake of his passing

with self-portrait of wino & jug

betting on the vulgar muse

before throwing up

in the face of

 

art-

less

death

 

 

 

 

Asymtomatic Bloodlines

 

 

Where are incendiary ruins of our city

Grooming the stones of yesteryear

What stinks in miasma's splendor

of everyday commerce now

Still roils in more felonious details

Of existence tethering us, like victims

To those unsavory facts of being

Persons with fraudulent hearts

& minds educated by game shows

They watch gamely in hospital

Hellish waiting rooms

Tepid with innumerable diseases

Waiting like emissaries on bad days

There you are the insane fanatic

Drinking blood from medical pouches

Stolen like Mother's morgue remains

I recycled into an edible commodity

For all the hungry geeks not

Tired of last food dining

 

 

 

 

BIO:

 

 

-- Peter Magliocco writes from Las Vegas, Nevada, where he's edited the lit-zine ART:MAG for over 20 years. He's had recent poetry in SCYTHE, GOLD DUST, HEELTAP, SCARS, A HUDSON VIEW POETRY DIGEST and more. He was Pushcart Prize nominated for poetry in 2010. His latest chapbooks are Nude Poetry Garage Sale (Virgogray Press) and The Heaven of Words (Propaganda Press).