Dustin Pickering (Western Voices 2023)

Bio: Dustin Pickering is founder of Transcendent Zero Press. He has contributed writing to Huffington Post, Café Dissensus Everyday, The Statesman (India), Journal of Liberty and International Affairs, The Colorado Review, World Literature Today, and several other publications. He placed in the top 100 out of 12,500 entries for the erbacce prize in 2021, and was a finalist in Adelaide Literary Journal’s first short fiction contest. He was longlisted for the Rahim Karim World Prize in 2022 and given the honor of Knight of World Peace by the World Peace Institute that same year. He hosts the popular interview series World Inkers Network on YouTube. 

 

The Grave where my rose will lay

"I will move away from here
you won't be afraid of fear"
-Kurt Cobain

Kiss the shadow slated down
of this atomic night
with your lips so bright
that they annihilate rivers of time.

Nothing more equal to the darkness
than the silence of waters.
We drink of these kisses at dawn.
We drink of dying
We drink of mirth
We only see the inevitable.

I am not afraid of these things
that whisper to me.
I know the God within them.
So much of this wretchedness
is His armor for a new day.

I drink of the waters at night
I drink of them at day
I see the silence of echoes
and I know the fear is the rose
where my grave will lay.

***

 

 

the spurting sink

the rain comes, it drosses
the mind with purity and skill.

there is nothingness between.
an eye will come worried through.

an empty fathom of the crux
where lay the crucifix,

mind of dream and destitution.
enlarge these warzone whispers.

sing the hyperreality of your magic,
think of the last man worshipped in tandem

to the muse of eternity.

***

 

 

the earth fell silent during the era of solitude

calculate this soil—seek the reigning hours.
you have left silently, o damnation to my pontifications,
raging waters fill my heart. the night welcomes banter.

and if i love, i love in stillness.

and if you love, it is in the past—

when we love, the final epoch in an aeon of oneness,
shadows the horizon with shimmering assortment.

let me lie quietly. let me feel the profoundness
of empty pains. let me know ignorance of motion.

there is nothing here but the power to listen.

---

Western Voices 2023 :: Setu, February 2023