Heath Brougher: Poetry (Western Voices 2021)

Bio: Heath Brougher is Editor-in-Chief of Concrete Mist Press and poetry editor of Into the Void, winner of the 2017 and 2018 Saboteur Awards for Best Magazine. He is a multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee as well as winner of Taj Mahal Review's 2018 Poet of the Year Award. His most recent collection is "Bleeding Backwards" (Diaphanous Press, 2019). His work can be found in various print and online publications. He hasn't had a good night's sleep in years. He is hoping to get one soon, though.

 

Melt

 

Humans have been playing a flaming piano

with enamel and obsidian keys afire and melting

into a pile of puddles.

 

Black and white viscous droplets forming

minuscule ponds of segregated colors

strewn across the lackluster basement floor.

 

It is the accumulation of human history.

Been going on since the long-fabled mutation.

 

Even when Blessed with thumbs these vociferous monkeys

cannot seem to conquer the inherent savagery within.

 

From Monolith to Mycelium  

 

Golden abacus moving 

spiraling slices of gravity;

cuneiform baby jars of Neqadah— 

the star inside the circle:

phyllotaxis—

such a fascinating

“tendency”—

a wonderful architect 

of whirring pinecones.

 

 

The Truth About Humans 

 

This is not a poem.

It’s a message.

A savage burst of Truth 

containing a chaosing new

and proper pronouncement

about the human race 

and the disgusting color 

of its bruised sentience 

when the predetermined niches 

of societal nesting it has contorted and comforted 

itself within so as to conform and slip

into the socially acceptable insanities 

that keep it cozily fat and happy—

only in these structures are humans 

capable of being "good.” 

 

Once those structures 

are burnt to the ground

they will show their True colors—

hues so grotesque words to accurately describe them do not exist.

 

I myself fully admit to being duped into thinking 

humans were inherently good inside.

It took 4 months of houselessness 

and endless grift to see the vile hue 

that lives deeply within these human beings.

---

Western Voices 2021 :: Setu, February 2021