#0137 - "...a sinful aesthetic..."

Cerberus suggests a sinful aesthetic:
salacious suggestions
amid incinerative incitations,
screaming "Anarchy!" in shallow-minded tones.

Oh, the frothing fiends that our forefathers feared:
they've emerged from the shadows
and dropped their masks
and now eagerly rush
towards devious tasks.

Bullets let fly:
      more small, bloodied hands
      lay still on the pavement.
Grand masses of currency
      fuel isolation
      and fuel the insurgency.
And as growing pains are injected
into our weakening lifeblood,
we take on more willingly
our addiction to anger:
an anarchic scream to drown out
      the pained scream.

All tortures end
      in acquittal
      or death.
And the decision draws near
      as to which end we'll get.

#0136 - Месте

Это не Россия.
Здесь не русские горола.
Здесь нет русских домов.
Здесь не русские люди.

Однако,
Если ты не думаеш
Я русский шпион,
Это может быт мое место:

Как Россия,
Как Америка…

#0135 - Return

Ah, the return!

For, though those neverending adventures,
meandering or maestro'ed,
bring into focus
a far-fetched reality
of unreal (or too real) proportions,

it is this place of seven-year-old covers
and unchanging hallways
that draws us back into historical routines
and coveted familiarities.

Here,
where the baggages lay in the closet,
and where the distant memories gather
from ganders and passings
to pleasurely pastimes
and eternal empathies.

#0134 - Day 1

A toast to the New Year!

Herald a new stretch of time:
unwritten words wait upon wisping nibs,
and as the gym memberships are dished out
(like Halloween candy)
the far-off future (background)
flies into focus, now foreground.
Some fear,
some fly.

This opportunity feeds off of the
audacities and intricacies of before:
those memories that are now
antiquity, but which now
pave the path to posterity.

#0133 - Violence

Sometimes,
all you need is a little violence
to get through the day.

But fire your shots into the void,

for neither the light
nor the darkness
will appreciate an assault.

Published

This week, Déraciné magazine​ published their début issue—Volume I, for Winter 2017—and I have the honor of being published in this issue with a previously unseen poem, “Waterfall.” I thank Déraciné sincerely for their hard work, and for allowing me to be a part of the project and community that they are introducing.

But I am not the only person to be published in this issue. My work appears alongside the works of 27 other individuals, each offering their own art form forward in an outstanding phantasmagoria of words, images, emotions, and ideas. Anyone who has some moments of time on their hands (and everyone does) should be happy to head over to their site to take a gander at this début issue.

Cheers,

J.B.

#0132 - Keyboards and Ink

You are as a keyboard is to ink on paper.

Tactile
—easy to handle—
and predictable.

Words run off of you
like the flow of displaced water:
overflowing cup.
And so many pages
and stories
and memories
and images
have been written off of you.

But you lack that uniquity
and that run-your-fingers-along-tangible-words quality.
You stare back from a harsh screen,
while ink
—dimly framed by candlelight—
does not settle,
but speaks.