Steven Minchin

since you didn’t ask and you didn’t
dare I want to tell you that
I think I
will be provoked I will be
a reflex a prorated nerve revised

Take this and go
with a stabbing of your own

Take this brash assurance

There’s a mark already set across
the eternity you pursue

Take that tattered notice and go

Tack it up against lament
like a map fading against a fear

Take an X to eternity go

Track marks across your Everafter
to keep it intact

Take this as a whimpering petition
or as an alert from a broadside
posted on a bullhorn

Heed it and go
with a charge fueled by murmurs

Take notice
the mark you came in with
will be the eternity you pursue

Let the hunt go
with a polished scream at that notice

Take this darting announcement
of a brittle uprising
lashing back against forever

Take it and go
injure tomorrow with yesterday’s claim

It’s time to turn forever inside out
Go

Take this and go on
with a wincing all your own

Take this shaking notice

claim it with your fairytale rust
tag it like a bronzed tooth blacked out

like a license marked up with thick black tape
Go on mark an X across eternity and go

This one will start before you begin
with a twisting insanity and sleep
right next to near
near knowing what you mean

The white noise middle is starting
floating here with so many
while the bright assassin’s still
safeguarding our dormant beginning

His saline born slug waits
as we deepen a groove
already set in rest
rest on a yesterday

A clear channel coast unseen
with a twisting insanity and sleep
he packs his joyous gun for travel
throttles our first dark epiphany

Shot wild now across everything
a flashback thrust at eternity
so we can rise and savor
savor ending as the dream

Smoke begets smoke
and men who say begets

fading wisps of men
like this one
here again on flimsy pages
which are actually screens before men
this man here begets smoke
and lets it summon whatever
strings of men and other things
that it can get spinning
through any natural air
as if they where a toy
a frail whirl of a toy
here again at the end of a grip
that’s forever bound to this man
and all that he begets

editors note: Slip a slice from the infinite string, see if the smoke swirls there. Then pick another… – mh clay

it tasted like nothing
and a little bit of water

but we were looking for flesh
more flesh
to keep an old infant wounded
new flesh
to spring from the pedals
on top of the alter
trampled beneath us
offering eternal flesh
to sustain
a dark holy trembling
shaking below
an eternal boy’s flesh

Let’s go undo real
don’t you mean
reality
I say
and you
say
not anymore

no more elephants
romping by
and back
across
LA
taking fares

you take off
to stop strings
whole
universes
end
and I stay

stampeding
alternate taxis
fading
into reality
which has taken
to fading
and flashing back

back to me
left while you were gone
undoing
I say
hey emptiness
ya wanna play?

We may have been stilled but we’re still thrashing,
taking on aquatic demons under stems’ smoldering influence –
swallowing highballs, turning night over in smoke until it’s pink,
smeared and popping – underneath blazes until night was still again,
until we were shaken again, shaken still, shaken and taken over.

I don’t know what I was gonna say

but
you’re the best decorated corner
I’ve ever seen

and
you nearly touch the floor
with your upright part
most up right now

and
your legs freestyle in low air
your arms trying to become
a part
of your head

I think I wanna touch you somewhere

but
fear that I’ll fall off
if I do