(Untitled)

I would give my blood and let it boil over
for a tree on which to rest my spine
and a pair of lips to let soak against mine, but
the spiders’ webs of trails of cars make my
head (somewhere in the calm of that storm) spin
tonight and the fan is humming me a long lonely drone
insisting on humming for me a long and lonesome drone

Nights like this I would stand on the shipping floor
at the giant doors awaiting trailers, smell nocturne on
one side and cardboard on the other. Amidst the
buffoons, abusers, and shallow (all colorful) there
was a distinct and lovely solitary silence. There was
something I loved about putting on those gloves

I left crowds, beauty, beer, tonight and a sense of I need to
be here because there is nowhere else to be. There were
cuties in cleavage in every direction, but they weren’t
there for me. When I did leave I was a madman, inside
spiders’ webs that I knew unfurled at an alarming rate
in the park leaf and blossom did the same, and at the
party my friends regretted they couldn’t keep me dancing
but the citizens of their excitement are so different from that
of mine, and I left as quickly as I came

My regret didn’t come that I ought not to
but that a pen and a pad is a shitty excuse
for a something to dance with or a someone to talk to.

Sam Packard (Ilalex)

VOICES

The messages come thick and fast -- like
Joan of Arc with her Saints Margaret and
Catherine and Michael, his spirit-guides
provide him clear instruction: their disciple,

he turns left or right -- away from dark (he says)
towards light. Perhaps it is projection but it gives
him some assurance of protection -- for a moment
he is safe. I can’t assess this as pathology:

it seems to me an absolutely viable response
to feeling spiritually chafed -- ripped raw. Dumped
into the depths of the abyss you will do anything
to promulgate at least the fleeting sense of

some experience of bliss: that is the law.
I sit here knowing nothing but that it is human
to resist the sucking maw that wants to swallow
him. I only wonder that I haven’t followed him.

Guy Kettelhack (GuyBlakeKett)

TRAVEL PLANS

I dreamt of you repeatedly last night,
the dreams of almost cinematic length
and color, and in intimate detail.
Your skin was pink with health, not drawn and pale,
your body taut with passion and with strength,
abounding in all kinds of appetite.
We walked from Le Crillon across the Seine,
and drank iced chocolate at a small café.
A sidewalk show of paintings then revealed
a tiny gem, in oils, of Ste. Clotilde,
its windows jewelled by the radiant day;
we bought it from an old parisienne.

I studied it today, by morning’s light,
and idly wondered where we’d meet tonight.

Mitchell Geller (EDowson)

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