"Skim," "People," and "The Return of Sound"
Skim
Your children are stones
who have skimmed the sun
who have been born into a world
where the toxicities have skinned the ozone
the sun skims across their faces everyday
razing red-hot and cancerous skin
in time all the stones will turn black
and melt away like Icararuswings.
People
People are people are made of people
like they’re supposed to be made of
people with peopleskin and peopleheart
[can turn dark and black sometimes
like a lump of coal what with these
endless wars and mass genocides]
made purely of peoplequality [usually shoddy]
with their peoplelives and peopleperceptions
and peoplebrains communicating with the other people.
The Return of Sound
Neutrino heavy gulp of heavenly hesitation
inadvertently switches on
an octogenarian's hearing aid
which has been hashtag stashed
in the oven until today. Unfiltered
sound waves suddenly suck in
the noise, the chitchat of the church
and subway train simultaneously
showing through ataxic sound skinflints
of various voices and all albums
from here to Allentown where the apathy
can be heard in the voices.
Shaggy memories heard through dust
remind him how nothing has changed
and Mankind is still a bunch
of silly monkeys with lucky thumbs.
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 also awarded the 2020 Wakefield Prize for Poetry. He has published twelve books and, after spending over four years editing the work of others, is ready to get back into the creative driver seat for a bit. He has two books forthcoming in 2024.
