today is stained again.
maculate money cuts through me
like a scythe through grass
or children's puny arms
when wielded by a woman
or a madman. the first thing
i understood was first
forgotten. no god
or woman wields time's axe
but i age myself 'til
i lay my unresisting shaft
in your hands
nothing ages worse
than man
night is operationally
defined. it is this chain
of dead days recursively
presented, and presentifies
nothing in our laps, like her
twisted tits that god
scarred herself
with her tiny knife.
it is futile objection against
fatuous life, a cosmos that
cuddles its own growing
cold, it is time's tidy
skeleton optimistic as
oblivion, it is star-showered
devils and nothingness
known.
night is a bandage and
murderous mirror, the nothing that
loves us and the mother
that fucks us, the ticking
of time that lies as it
passes, the wine and the
drinking and death's empty
glasses.
its scarified skin is
our futile reprisal, its
temporary meaning but a
whore's resurrection, blind christ
whose rape's failure is impotent
god. we bite off our own nipples
and spit them over heaven
for another days' passive
action, torment
and breakfast at seven
on seven empty sins, though
several are better sins
whose rigorous stringency
just now escapes me,
the only known duty is holy
lonely sodomy
and the oracle we believe in
the cretinous penis, gender
that bends and the crass obligation
to murder sex qua the smelly
salvation that laves us
in the sheets' sensuous
leavings, like memories
or meanings,
shopping lists of things to believe
or dream
some sit and watch, but most walk
purposefully as if a leader
followed them and seemed
to speak and direct
as memories do. i just lie
motionless here tied
to stately beds won by cold
psychosis. memories weigh
like tiny tomorrows rolled in a ball
in my flimsy stomach stapled
together from love
and feathers. the lizards there
have eaten all the butterflies
and tonight they sing to me
rather beautifully, say that they
are life.
David McLean has been submitting for the past year and has had around 300 poems accepted by 125 magazines. A chapbook, a hunger for mourning with 53 of his poems has just been released by Erbacce Press.