Monday, December 12, 2022

Steve Brisendine Contemplates Giving God A Free Shot, The Angel-Slain Firstborn, And Thickets Of Fingernails

edge of evening, edge of storm

everything is just short
of something

in this moment: almost
dusk,

almost rain, almost time
to go

home, almost tempting 
to grab that almost-wet
flagpole 

and say 
hey God,
free shot



Sahara haze: a plague of 2020

breathe in bone-remnants
of the angel-slain firstborn;

what blood can cover
our own doorposts, ward away

one more chastisement for who
we have failed to be?

the discarded of this land
cry out from dark soil;

we who exist between dust
and dust must give an answer



Unsafe

In which Erato, muse of love poetry, admonishes her followers:

Enough.

Still your trembling
(from need
or
exhaustion)
pens.

Come out from
(on one side)
your tangled burnings and yearnings,
long looks and looks of longing,

(and on the other)
your thickets of friction and fingernails,
shudders and satiated silence.

Stand here,
on the bridge between yielding 
yes
and claiming 
Yes,

and do 
not
breathe, 

for not even air can be steady here,
where all is slick and shaking
and everything rests upon

one
point,

thin as two layers
of skin
(and only one 
of those
yours).

Wait.
Look down.

Now write.


Steve Brisendine is a writer, poet, occasional artist and recovering journalist living and working in Mission, KS. He is the author of two collections from Spartan Press: The Words We Do Not Have (2021) and the upcoming Salt Holds No Secret But This (2022). He was a finalist for the 2021 Derick Burleson Poetry Prize.

Rp Verlaine Explores Where Androids Go To Die, The Dissolving Fish, That Heaven We Knew, And The Hemlock Of Repetition

Inadequate Patterns 


Like dissolving fish 

on the computer  

screen saver, 

we disintegrate 

each new kiss, 

each pale white room 

where we suffocate 

asking for air 

others took from us. 

 

Like fragile tape, 

the data truncated and bereft 

starting points or ends, 

the wheels just spin, 

no sticking to facts 

erased in fail-safe 

where androids go to die 

when love neither life supports 

or dies. 

 

Like sleeping patterns 

void of stimuli, 

all noiseless night 

or blinding light 

no eyes to guide us 

we drift between days 

conscious of nothing 

we take turns defining. 

 

Yet we can't be alone, 

malfunctioning toward 

final decay, but 

we can't be alone 

like the stars, planets 

oceans, and the 

dissolving fish 

for which no hook exists, 

at least not yet. 


Recalibration 

 

Disengaged to wonder 

past the indifferent portals  

of strangers, 

I still reach out 

to your vaunted charm 

in its invisible setting 

no longer there. 

 

Phantoms now 

lost in the glittering 

streets of chaos 

we once navigated 

with the confidence 

of having such arrogance 

we played by calculations 

that never failed before 

transfixed by the astonishing 

blur of a roulette 

wheel we bet on 

once misnamed love. 

 

Now disengaged 

from all we assumed 

yet unable to validate 

With religious fervor 

all former preconceptions 

we reach out looking up 

to that heaven we knew, 

no longer there. 

 

 The Safe Place

 

In utero 1st 

antiseptic scrubs 

videoed stirrings to preschool 

slow crawl walking past 

temporarily eclipsed friends, 

sports, desires each familiar  

foreign in solemn proximity 

to a safe place no longer. 

 

A cautious double 

take. Comes up empty. 

a kiss held, treasured, 

missed marriage if... 

the immune two-step 

backwards the counter 

forwards to children 

in solemn proximity to 

a safe place no longer. 

 

Work... drone drone drone, 

the hemlock of repetition 

of time's spaces between  

cracks, sickness, retirement. 

death gives its notice 

stronger yet, ‘til finally 

blessed with acceptance  

yes, this life, 

the same game lost 

a safe place no longer.


The Extended Temporary
Into the ridiculous
we fall seemingly safe
absent this safety net
we pretends is real.
Obscure as distant friends
avoiding us in passing
we turn out the lights
and pretend the familiar
is no longer a lie.
Our latest meal together
full of empty plates
and text's to others
the new clever fictions
no rescue in sight.
Additions and subtractions
we note on the abacus
video diaries without
endings or purpose. 
Every reason obscure
clever with evasions
getting at the truth
kissing with closed lips
crashing cars in new avenues
of thought with suspended
sentences we cant finish.
Each night, turning  out lights
in separate rooms pretending
the familiar is no longer a lie.

Rp Verlaine lives in New York City.He has an MFA in creative writing from City College.He taught in New York Public schools for many years.His first volume of poetry- Damaged by Dames& Drinking was published in 2017 and another – Femme FatalesMovie Starlets & Rockers in 2018. A set of three e-books
titled Lies From The Autobiography vol 1-3 were published from
2018 to 2020. His newest bookImagined Indecencies,
was published in February of 2022.