Heath Brougher (Western Voices 2022)

Bio: Heath Brougher is the Editor-in-Chief of Concrete Mist Press and co-poetry editor of Into the Void, winner of the 2017 and 2018 Saboteur Awards for Best Magazine. He received Taj Mahal Review’s 2018 Poet of the Year Award and is a multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. He was awarded the 2020 Wakefield Prize for Poetry. He has published 11 books and, after spending over two years editing the work of others, is ready to get back into the creative driver seat. He has four books forthcoming in 2022. 

Parabola 

Although four degrees warmer

he felt cold and ugly 

in the sober hush

of rosetta patience, giving blood—

the first time he let go 

of his childhood’s prison sex

under a dead Ohio sky.

Ahhh, f**k! Here we go again!

He dropped sweat at the bottom

of an aeon blue apocalypse,

a schism of the soul, 

disgustipated dismantled societies,

the flood of a tempest’s energies

descending into his newly invincible head

after deciding to make weapons 

out of his imperfections. 

(SPECIAL PART ADDED FOR TOOL FANS IN LIEU OF RECENT EVENTS CONCERNING SOME KIND OF DEMENTED RATIOCINATIVE FINNEGANS WAKE-INSPIRED KAFKAESQUE ENDING OF A BAND I USED TO GREATLY ADMIRE!)

I went on a chocolate chip trip 

but only found litanies against fear 

and the thrumming of an underwhelming mockingbeat 

before I took the opiate that caused me pain,

realizing all these years the joke has been on us!

***

Systemia  

Generations of children educated 

by Pavlovian ritual and outright mania

have their questions and curiosity quelled 

by age 10 at the Obedient Worker Factory.

This is done by decree of the Owners.

The stain of a mustard-seed could appear ugly

but it could also be beautiful. No one

would know about that in these vacuous hallways. 

Beauty and integral foundries 

are not friends with the curriculum.

They are housed in dense shadows of oblivion.

 

Teacher sends little miss sunshine 

to the principal’s office 

for writing a love letter to god

and as she enters the mediocrity enthusiast’s 

monochromatic roomful of poisonous mirrors 

the authority king quickly stashes 

his love letter to satan in a drawer.

Not a moment aglow or miraculous  

on the tilted battlefield 

and this is but one example 

of the insidiousness of the 0.0001% wealthiest american’s 

evil empire. They only speak about it amongst themselves. 

“We don’t think or care about mass enslavement”

said a member of the billionaire elite. 

“We consider it a sign the machine is running smoothly.”

***

Titleless 

An egg 

is broken.

The Earth comes to an end. 

Worms in the necropolis.

This had

nothing to 

do with a lack of adversaries. 

There was never a shortage of those. 

***

---

Setu, April 2022