Z.M. Wise (Western Voices 2020)

Exclusive: Western Voices, 2020: Edited by Scott Thomas Outlar
Bio: Z.M. Wise is a proud Illinois native from Chicago, poet, essayist, occasional playwright, seldom screenwriter, co-editor and arts activist, writing since his first steps as a child. He was selected to be a performer in the Word Around Town Tour in 2013, a Houston citywide tour. He is co-owner and co-editor of Transcendent Zero Press, an independent publishing house for poetry that produces an international quarterly journal known as Harbinger Asylum. The journal was nominated Best Poetry Journal in 2013 at the National Poetry Awards. He has five books of published poetry, including: Take Me Back, Kingswood Clock! (MavLit Press, 2013), The Wandering Poet (Transcendent Zero Press, 2014), Wolf: An Epic & Other Poems (Weasel Press, 2015), Cuentos de Amor (Red Ferret Press, 2015), and Kosmish and the Horned Ones (Weasel Press, 2018). His debut play, Bottles of Emerald for the Demon Queen (Transcendent Zero Press, 2019), was published in late December of 2019. His sixth book of poetry, Illinois Infinitarium (Cherry House Press, 2020), will be published in the summer months of 2020. Other than these books, his poems, lyrics, essays, and book reviews have been published in various journals, magazines, and anthologies. The motto that keeps him going: POETRY LIVES AND LONG LIVE THE ARTS! Mr. Wise will make sure to spread that message and the love of the arts, making sure it remains vibrant for the rest of his days and beyond. Besides poetry and other forms of writing, his other passions/interests include professional voice acting, singing/lyricism/songwriting, playing a few instruments, fitness, and reading. 


Viral Spiral/Pandemic Epic

Brittle words on sun-bleached sheets.
Love in the time of papyrus,
love in the time of papyrus.
Writing verses, saccharine and sanguine, for mi querida.
Love in the time of papyrus,
love in the time of papyrus.
Scratched out edits on moon-kissed drafts.
Love in the time of papyrus,
love in the time of papyrus.
Midnight showings of one-woman performance in Kabuki theatre.
Polytheistic goddess rain,
shower our faces with blinding logic again.

Neck kisses from lavender lips, arise the bumps of skin.
Love in the time of the fire,
love in the time of the fire.
Quaking within tremors of intimacy.
Love in the time of the fire,
love in the time of the fire.
Two-backed beast caught in an inferno of frenzy.
Love in the time of the fire,
love in the time of the fire.
One second lost without defining touch succumbs to lunacy.
Drenched with the waters of Poseidon,
stiff white gold corpse of his trident.

Sea horseback rider galloping towards a desolate floating minnow school.
Love in the time of the virus,
love in the time of the virus.
Mayhem in the shrieking populace amidst the roots of the outbreak.
Love in the time of the virus,
love in the time of the virus.
Particle invisible, demon jaws decreasing the once-thriving numerical order of things.
Love in the time of the virus,
love in the time of the virus.
Unspeakable stubbornness and utter refusal, the universe’s final mistake.
Dying voices of the deathly sick and to those who panic,
help us to cease this abhorrent pandemic (before the hour of the tragic.

She stole my sacred heart to satisfy her secret soul.
Love in the time of denial,
love in the time of denial.
She pretends our unity was some hysterical mania depicted by the whitewashed media.
Love in the time of denial,
love in the time of denial.
Innocence lost to the wandering of a forest foal, paying woodland tolls.
Love in the time of denial,
love in the time of denial.
She leaves herself in a dehydrated corner to wilt like a pitiful gardenia.
Outcome unintentionally venomous, no sign of amity.
Let me breathe in exile as a shame-caked shadow in anonymity.

Fragile genius sings that they have left him behind.
Love was the cause of the virus,
love was the cause of the virus.
Black-eyed dog crooning to a milk-eyed cat of seasons.
Love was the cause of the virus,
love was the cause of the virus.
This upward prism spaghettifies into a downward spiral.
Love was the cause of the virus,
love was the cause of the virus.
Yet another madman’s blues, sinking seaworthy to the City of Blessed Heathens.
Judgment Days, reconcile and be damned!
Join us, silver refugees, as we mark our eight year out on the lam.

Love in the time…
love in the time…
Love was the cause…
love was the cause…
Compose newfangled myths
and love is the cure!
Compose newfangled myths
and love is the cure!



The Black Dreams of God

Pissant walks to the beat of a different drum,
reciting fragmented psalms to an empty congregation.
Insignificant singer dulls words down to a dim hum,
draining the lives of another twenty first century sensation.

And she finds herself falling from a rooftop,
purgatorial repetition on her skin, the circles of crops.
And he finds himself succumbing to the mundane,
death mask coming to life as a madcap insane.

Bat heads boil under cauldron bubbles,
supersonic screeches struggle with flightless wings.
Sacrifice the skies to thunderous applause.
Post-atomic hand bursts through the rubble,
bowing before an army of skeletal kings.
Greetings to the creatures of pacifism who retract their claws.

At last, acceptance comes to greet you
with the faces of angelic ancestors.
Avalon-like mists surround their guardian mouths
to choose your book of literary predecessors.
Gliding acrobats, the servants in white
blossom from the flower buds of ascension.
Traveling show, sir, kiss the seasonal ring,
belonging to a parallel spirit dimension.
We are but mere symbols tangled in some obscure affair.
Take the Black Dreams of God and turn them into a heavenly nightmare.

Like a sacrificial storm of Nile children wine,
I blush maroon in reply to her kiss.
Transcending the solitudinarian’s need to be confined,
I commit to eighty-eight more golden years of secondhand bliss.

Visions of watery deserts, making waves with sand monsoons.
Fields of lovers swept away by an envious typhoon.
One tongue of Albion speaks Blakean praise to Jerusalem.
Devils lost a morning star to the glowing heir of Bethlehem.
Walking across meadows of the blinding sky,
daylight turns a blind eye to a green pyramid.
Swimming under polychromatic kaleidoscope visions,
does this realm feel any different to those who lie?
A new motif for imaginations so vivid,
a new prison for a chaotic mind that lacks precision.

Wax and fog, fog and wax, grounded brume clouds
collect their followers, the earthen accolades.
Only one guru shrouded in bearded tears
will know the anti-climactic kiss of the cobra’s blades.
Stepping out into the fray of bloodlust,
the one who succumbs to glory, o’ resistance fighter.
“The pen was no mightier than the sword,”
so sayeth the lone prolific prophecy writer.
Date the continued end of a neo-futurist poem,
turn these Black Dreams of God to picturesque statue stone.



Blue Karma

Meditating…
Buddha’s head,
Vishnu’s body,
sapphire spirit guide.
Floating city above the monks’ village,
above this mountain.
Sane as they wish,
taming beasts of legend,
the ones mentioned in sermons.
And, then it came back to bite me.

Faith in what?
Faith in what?
Hovering aquatic women,
hovering bald heads,
chanting the same notes repeatedly.
Lovelier than the wind,
a tickling betwixt the neck and ear.
No good or bad.
I was born with a choice.
And, then it came back to seduce me.

Seduce you, how?
Did you wed her
before you bed her?
Traditionalist rituals, outside on a leash.
It is the eternal flame of love which penetrates,
not I.
Not I.

Grudge against the nature of meaning,
grudge against the calling of the wrong dream.
Collecting hateful deceits,
collecting hateful acts.

One does what one can,
so all hail the Dark One after the
country collapses into nix.
All hail the Dark One who
dwells under every metropolitan stone.
And, then it came back to show me who was boss.

Forest fires die down.
Sunken ships rise to the surface
from the slumberous crevasses.
The real treasure within was the
fetal beginning of our people.
And I thank you, monks, and
I bow to my master.
I kiss my mistress, but I
clutch my betrothed, the pen.
And, then it came back to wish me a less than fair salutations.

You fed her countless dreams, did you not?
Did you let her before
you wanted to forget her?
Sacred blue reminders wander off without me.
It was the chained heart of armor that let her go,
not I.
Not I.

3 comments :

  1. Love your uses of color and religious/spiritually intoned language. Can't go wrong with a phrase like "Nile children wine!"

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thankies ever so much!!! :-)

      Delete
  2. Wow Zack! Loved a few
    Devils lost a morning star to the glowing heir of Bethlehem.
    Walking across meadows of the blinding sky,
    And the sapphire spirit guide
    Lovely all, blue karma my best

    ReplyDelete

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