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.
***
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