Sketches, panels and planets

new gods and forever people

oh, where have the humans landed

in a tidal wave of inhumanity

screaming “cosmic retribution!”, frogs from the sky

lightening zapped by hovering squids from another planet,

each being a universe in the pocket careening into a nihilistic void

bursting into new directions in the quasars of minds yet to be born,

the infinite crisis of anti-life equation is not not learning- we don’t know how to live

but how we are not allowed to live, rebels of delusion,

mirroring counter-revolutionary tactics,

the constellations come together,

Orion with his belt makes a club of mars,

Jupiter splits apart, innards of creme corn

and interstellar strippers made of jello and (here all thought it was gas)

existence, exit stance,

another wave of reality

forget the fourth and fifth worlds,

demand to break the wall

between self and source, they say mathematics is the language,

words are treason, but the mystery is breathing,

the philosophy is marvel in the elseworlds of confinement,

the miracle to concede defeat in the land of unliving

an embracement of tomorrow’s glory

when moment is what you are without meaning,

true being, serenity of the soul, there’s your earthen saga

and heroic myth of the ages recycling into another dawn tinged transmigration

of starved stardust exploding angels and the nine fingers of nirvana,

but what about the thumb?

up my dead wandering desolate ass, wrestling a stranger in town – the valley of bones

where giant men in unstable molecular suits are testament highways

warnings to lovers of all ages

gracing the wild and crazy eternity.

MURMUR

There is an echo
That resonates
Throughout her soul
A light
Where all darkness
Disappears

Her smile
A mere second
Which lasts
An eternity

A Wardrobe Malfunction

Anne Fall

Generally false,

I find your societal distinctions

reek of sentiment and disbelief

in the worth of the rest of humanity.

Despite that, I like listening to you talk

about this and that.

Almost like, you know where it’s all at.

Then, you show through

like a little slip of a nip in the embarrassing dress

of a woman whose breasts

have seen better men than the applications

she’s currently taking.

Drink this, and you’ll feel better, I tell you,

and you do.

Oh, you do.

Our Sex Is Our

death. Important decision

for my wife and I.

We live with the urge to do it.

Day in day out.

Thirty five years married.

It has to be mutual.

First time sex is last time alive.

We must decide before

We are too weak

and other devices needed.

Sex is euthanasia, you see.

We agree when enough is enough.

I was born from my dead mam.

So, hopefully my wife will become

pregnant after we die.

Children in the Sky (V2)

By Michael Lee Johnson

There is a full moon,

distant in this sky tonight,

Gray planets planted

on an aging white, face.

Children, living and dead,

love the moon with small hearts.

Those in heaven already take gold thread,

drop the moon down for us all to see.

Those alive with us, look out their

bedroom windows tonight,

we smile, then prayers, then sleep.

The birds in the tree

they laid in the park like a sneak preview of being resurrected from their caskets but I didn’t want to tell them that the sun looked too old on their heads. I would’ve walked up to every father and said  I didn’t sleep with your daughter. Even if it was a lie. I just wanted to say how are you, thank you for keeping my childhood on your spice rack. I’m sorry I don’t want to leave but all we ever wanted from the beginning was to kiss goodbye. I’m sorry I’m already gone. Did the mortician do your lipstick? I’m glad you’re at peace with how you’re dead. R.I.P.

and I spent the night on the other side of your roads
when the deer were dying and dark
I wanted you to come out from your statue houses in khaki shorts
to let me into your imaginary guest rooms
but you were in the dust of your welcome mats
and I couldn’t get past your smiles
I wanted to die by the stones in the mulch of your gardens
and on your daughter’s dining carts in their television worlds

DECADENCE

The decay consumes me,

the constant erosion of the solid,

all shape in slow flux.

Wind whips, rain batters, air dissolves,

light fractures as much as it illuminates.

Everything from the screech of brakes

to the sidewalk underfoot

is in the corrupting pay of time.

I sit alone in a quiet room

yet still my molecules bombard each other,

a billion rounds in my head,

even my toes, a war zone.

And day, that great over-achiever.

can’t resist the overwhelming night.

I’m a day myself.

The sun within me is counting down the hours.

Everything is unrelenting,

is designed to be what it isn’t now.

Get over it. somebody says.

Or spend more time with the eternal.

Like the sea for instance –

those waves constantly remaking shore,

rubbing rocks the wrong way,

spitting out carcasses.

Or the stars –

wonderful glowing hearth-fires

but no wood-pile in reserve.

Everything is matter – that’s the issue here.

It cannot be created or destroyed.

But despaired of –

now that’s another story.

Undertow

Though there was the ritual, I remained

a stranger to the formalities of church.

Long Island was Catholic back then, before

the heavy-accented, gold-cross-wearing

Pentecostals traded holy water

for the laying on of hands. The ritual:

wake, groom, dress, Corn Flakes, get ready for church.

There, the ritual was to stay awake.

My father promised I could make my own

decision about attending at thirteen.

I did. I left the church. But he left first.

There is no secret to it: the son does

what the father does until he doesn’t.

Our world was an idyllic place then. We were

insulated from most global news, and by

global, I mean New Jersey and beyond.

We were truly part of the middle class

and just a short drive from the most beautiful

beaches in the world. Fake ID actually

worked, and if you were lucky enough to date

an older girl, no one cared about the law.

Perhaps “churchlessness” is not a word yet,

but to Long Island Catholics, it was heaven.

Now, I am older and everything has changed.

I bought a nicer home than my father could,

and I have surpassed him in education

and income, even after adjusting for

inflation, yet I am lower middle class

because the middle class no longer exists.

The world is also more dangerous, or, perhaps,

I have that perception because of the news

cycle that is unceasing. Regardless,

I take my children to a non-Catholic,

non-Pentecostal church and they thrive.

Still, I cannot ignore the fact that but for

my father not being Muslim, I am not

Muslim and my children are not Muslim.

We are not Jews because he was not a Jew.

I take my children to the hospital

because he took me to the hospital.

Then, I was fifteen passing for eighteen;

today, my seventeen year old could not pass

for twenty-one. And I thank God that we

do not live near a beach because I cannot

bear the thought of my children being pulled

away from me, the two separated

with me having to make the choice to save one.

#

Violence

The mouth of the harmless newborn is violent
with hunger.

There is no greater colliding force than when
truth confronts a lie.

Hermeneutical errors start a long war while a
surprise attack, unintentionally, shortens a war.

The anodyne water that comprises most of our
bodies and our earth, that alleviates thirst, cools

or warms us, helps the flowers to face the sun,
flushes away our waste, ends droughts, and

makes children celebrate knows no violent equal,

the lack of it as threatening as the tsunami.

A boxer who refuses to fight in an unwarranted
war proves to be a man of peace.

#

Yours

The whistle I’d always slept through
nudged me, and I knew that on this
day, only one after I’d quit school,
I would be crowned a man by your
brothers, another virginity mislaid.
I would stick close to your side and
pretend to be the obedient son. We
would share a vow reserved for a
husband and wife, a becoming of
one. Your lungs were now mine.
You said I could never quit and set
a date for me to leave home so that
I would stay at you hip, you who
just yesterday let me quit school.
Even in the mine, I am yours.

Michael Marrotti’s book review of Dr. Randall K. Rogers’s latest chapbook.

https://excavatingtheunderground.wordpress.com/2017/07/17/book-review-cambodia-poems-2009-2012-by-randall-k-rogers/