A Little Courage Off The Top
“In order to know virtue, we must first acquaint ourselves with vice.”
-Marquis de Sade
A Procurer faced a precursor
And declared to the wind; “Let’s go Nam!”
His rotund voice explored the complexities of Death Rattle.
A conversation served as a pinch in quantity,
A quality ignored
When a pro stuttered to a stimulated janitor.
Aesthetic relevance suspended on his tonsils
A rabble of vibrato
A language dead as a corpse
Stuck to the throat
Like a Money-Shot.
But his promises were loose change.
Found inside the sofa,
Underneath the vending machine
Where vermin scattered at the sight of fingers,
Because they knew he used his fingers
To vomit.
A Letter From a Luddite
1.
Under what conditions do diamonds fracture like secondhand earthenware?
And find detergent viable as saliva,
-Ah-Bubbles-
Inside this fracture
Where
Enamel once flourished (drool) (dish water)
But endurance diminishes,
What
-Once in a moment-
Belongs
There,
For the past dictates our comforts.
Phantom limb.
Phantom tooth,
I endure thy haunting!
Within the advice of comfort,
I find an answer:
“You’ll get used to it.”
But
Under what conditions is the progress of “Used to it” measured?
I tickle the phantom.
I lick the botched root canal
Like a clitoris.
With my tongue
Comes infection,
Comes human behavior,
Comes the lessons of greed,
Comes the directions of morality.
And so is a smile imperfect?
And so is inequality a necessity
When incentives control the progress
Of morality?
2.
She keeps a partial torso on the bed,
Poses her fingers underneath the lampshade,
To form a shadow puppet that narrates the darkness.
Bestiality becomes a fight for survival.
“Why does the light remain hidden?”
“Because the strength of richness comes from another’s fingers.”
There's No Editing Time
Durability
Stale as a mind on lithium.
And doesn’t America’s reflection
Scamper by in the car windows?
So bruising are unheard words.
That I translate mute language as ancient wisdom
Reliable like Confucius’ take on
Morality.
“What creates wealth
Creates jobs!”
But isn’t all time borrowed?
Thus when my hands grasp
Washington’s whipping hand
And the fingers Stalin held his cock with
It becomes apparent
We’re as old as memories allow.
Then it’s possible the instructions for morality
Have been forgotten,
Or
Ought to be.
I blink this thought until it focuses
On the vagabond standing in the median
With a cardboard sign, decorated in a request
For monetary gain.
A Prius passes him creating a gust
That takes the baseball cap
Off his head.
It floats like trash onto the ground.
I hold my breath and watch him bend
To pick it up, while a car almost clips his skull.
I wonder for a moment how I would feel
Watching a man die by an impromptu force.
Could the Prius driver be charged with homicide?
Or does morality forgive accidents?
Bio-
A.j.
Binash is a post-post-post-modernist poet from La Crosse, WI. He has
released two books of poetry one titled Cautionary Tales of an American
Boy Out Past Curfew (Rattlesnake Valley Publishing). The other is A-Okay
On Main St USA (independently published). He has also been featured in
the W.F.O.P. (Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets) Muse- Letter, Horror Sleaze
Trash, Talking Soup, Metaphor Magazine, among others.
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