Western Voices: Heath Brougher,

Bio:

Heath Brougher is the poetry editor of Into the Void, winner of the 2017 and 2018 Saboteur Award for Best Magazine. He is a multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net Award Nominee. He won the The Taj Mahal Review’s 2018 Poet of the Year Award and his work has been translated into several languages other than English. His newest books are To Burn in Torturous Algorithms (Weasel Press, 2018) and The Ethnosphere's Duality (Cyberwit.Net, 2018).

Bubble Gum Freedom

Freedom is now Freedown, Freedrown—

a fabrication; an illusion

made by the herd’s slave owner

to keep the masses caged

while they pour Free Dumb

straight down the throats of the many

by means of rampant propaganda

all arriving by air, land, sea

to converge upon the mind in an almost infinite confusion—

the television and internet are the main funnels of misinformation

in this land of illusion within illusion within illusion within illusion.

Be Like the Creek Water

You will get nowhere standing

in the silly Manmade circles

which unfortunately encompass

most people’s lives.

You must live like the creek nearby

your living room with its worn-out recliner—

the same water never running through

the same area in its eternal flowing—

the same water never rippling

the same way it did during its previous ripple.

Don’t be insan(m)e.

For the loops you live within

usually come with their own cubicle

and a line drawn in the land

to demarcate what is yours

and what is theirs

as you’ve become a tool

for the Controllers of this feudal era.

It is a lie and it persists 

because you let it persist.

You were taught to let it persist.

Be like the creek water, never flowing

the same. For that creek water

is the cousin of The Great Spiral.

The reigning tedium can be quit by tapping into this mindset.

Roost

Above roots, a chloroplast pulse

eaten away. Tomato skin 

blanket of lifelong numbness, 

smiled at by callous

wilted teeth scraped and 

sprung red

in the crevices. Cells maintain anonymous

existence in the field.

Picking of life bulbs needless 

when the appetite

and parasitic throe of being 

served as a leafy appetizer 

when the meat-eaters finally arrive.

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Western Voices :: Setu, February 2019