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THOSE HOWLS
They know I hide my howls in cheeky places
Always have
and no valid argument has dared me successfully
to stop
The playing field caters with vastness now
that everyone
simply subscribes to the bare number one
Epitomizing number one
Claiming it as a possession has shriveled to a bore
like roadkill
left by the night for the crematory foibles of the sun
or myself
when from my upstart dementia they proceed
to mine for hints
ascertaining whereabouts of those elusive primal screams
They don’t get it
Or perhaps I have just treasured those periodic
plumes of volume
more than anyone could fathom on their own watch
Maybe
they’ll accuse me of being miserly with my cathartic heirloom
So be it
Those howls were honed for dynastic residencies
not a one-hit wonder
or a one-night stand or a one-trick pony
They epitomize
Those howls of mine illustrate far too easily
for marketplace posterity
They’re my answers out there hiding in the wind
they will have
to catch one regenerating blow at a time
05 12 20
OUTBREAK’S ODE TO THE IN-CROWDS
We just don’t believe like we used to
Those
of a past
generation or two
needed no subject
to peddle sublime verbiage
Even those who chose
to believe in nothing nonetheless
hydroplaned on the pooled
conscience of a contribution
to a fluid puzzle
gleefully awaiting little bangs
of innovational heredity
They were the mustard seed
generations
Their subsequent children
be they nesting birds
or intrusive
were destined for that tree to greet
their maiden flight
Then the trees
fell
into the abyssal path
imprinted on the groundwork
of ancestry
The elders
embezzled the leaves
to furnish their coffins and bloodlines
An egg without a nest now
is born to be rotten
with capital looking more
like the new cotton
Just when a generation
needs a peacekeeper magnetic enough
to lead from a bed of example
But no
For trust of that ilk
has been mangled by the distrust
outed so commonly
by the deaf choir of screens
and cameras
This is the new charisma
Even John Lennon can’t jam
with these circumstances
for this is visual
and the outbreak confining us
to the home fires is not
We didn’t start it
the renegade flares
of a generation plead
Visuals rule now
Visionaries take heed
CRED
Poets of tomorrow
Take heed
of the new breed
of characters
offsprung
from that pirouetting medium
with their curt clerics
sweeping one-line languages
under limpid ambassador
coughs
Tweety bird Nobels
wadding the obvious
into a wholesome oration
dashed with sardonic
garlic and ironic salt
These characters are not
down with death
Integers and melancholy
aren’t on that clock
All the time required
to bootleg
the nectar of that sweet
poetic payoff of yours
stands to melt
in transcendent evenness
over evolution’s silicon
umbrella
Poets don’t inflict depression
They don’t vaccinate you
with punctuation
03 29 20
YOU’RE NOT READY FOR THE REAL THING
We’re apocalyptin’ here
when it’s more of an
apocalypsinc
Breath holding in the voice
with a soothsayer’s spite
You’re not ready for the real thing
hisses evolution
and in harmony pollution
Flip-sides are greener than
freshly groomed grass
I could iron all the ruffled
and neglected streets
with the irony of this inverted
loneliness
Where are all the words
when I need them?
Sole informants
on the mythic whereabouts
of infinity?
Never should it have achieved
this crescendo of diluted levity
Wake me when the reformatted
census ends
03 23 20
DREAMS OF AIR FOR A BREATH
A voice strewn blue and skittish
over pages pleading for your eyes
dreams of air for a breath
of a sound for your ears
now that I have aced
to implied infinity
the recitations of a muted conscience
sympathetically refined to (my best hope
for) emphatically-designed decrees of
commonalities numb and nondescript
amid the undeterred currents of
robotic small talk’s swamp of
gestures and conjunctions
With what degree of force
would I knock upon your wall
to rule out the freneticism
of disharmony’s snivelling parade of
blood-deaf messengers?
How little force
would relay to you the gap
between a knock of melody and noise?
And am I even sure I’ve learned
to swim incessantly enough to greet you
with some aspiration in my bloodless voice
to emulate wallpaper?
11 26 14
THE MAN CAME AROUND
No leads
Origins debated
He’s gone mongering
dispatching seeds
of orphaned glossaries
The journey to retrieve
implies the legend
His echo must be filtered
The seeker is the sifter
Destination blues
simmer and infuse
the journey with docility
He wants to be found
and we counter with
the indignity
of debatable discovery
01 26 20
AN EXERCISE IN NAME-DROPPING
There are seekers I am eager
to recruit
say
Dante
No romanticism
even
in his romantic
love
People ate
each other’s heads
where he went
Not the good one either
Dante found
that place
The intestines of the goaded
blowfish
of mortal fear
Maybe Milton
was aspiring
to numb that fear
in the distribution
of all his cool lines
Was it all a code
or was he the sheep
on a lycanthropic trip
barricading all humans
even their most Deadheaded
hippies
from the best of both
spiritual worlds
Every spiritual feeling
is a choice
Your respective Devil
is a choice
What is promising
is the noble notion
Milton may be right
and the karmic scales even out
But the seekers I intend to draft
are dividers who can rock divisiveness
like Live-Aid
galvanized our instincts for unity
Make me live on the suspense
of a choice and consequence
and I’ll be more tempted
than I care to admit
to be mindful
of a wrong and right answer
02 05 20
WEATHER-SENSITIVE
This
heavy humid June rain betrays
Mother Nature’s tweak
of masochism curiosity
in a failed censorship of
quaint elemental
menstrual melancholy
The kind of weather
Teddy Hughes would suffer
to befriend
My muse enables star manifesting
in a room immune to skies
though it matters not
for it is its own
self-reliant constellation
extraneous yet
affiliating with all incarnations
of the carbon jigsaw
To feign a sleep on such a day
is to invest
in a lottery of moods
tripping dim fandangos
to fall upon their faces
where they stay
vowing to donate potential jackpots
to Mother Nature
like sacrifices for a favorable
harvest of July jitterbugs
BELL-STREWN BRIDGE (Meter, rhythm, and scheme inspired by Poe’s ‘The Bells’)
None shall cross this tolling bridge-
Tainted bridge!
Teasing on the far horizon is salvation’s ridge!
Choir of the seven no-nos
sang attrition to a doze;
they were hitchers of determined thumb
mining ditches for a holy plum.
Now their aptitude is froze.
I’m the sky-high-pie
they alone bit to get by.
Bellies swamped with swagger, they’re now jammed in marshes of guilt,
pools I built, built, built, built,
built, built, built,
‘twixt the bridge and ridge to freeze my fate in guilt.
04 02 15
Writings of Steven Fortune 