Literary Orphans

Two Poems
by Jeremy Maddux

Vicarious_by_navidoutlaw


Revolvers are Sexy

You followed the rose petal trail

Up and around the courtyard stairs

Through dining room, office and smoking lounge

Ignoring that always locked door at the end of the hall

And the room behind it, which no one ever enters

If you were to stand outside this house on certain nights

You’d swear it was manned by some unseen entity

A screaming beacon of rage, a voyeur framed by moonlight

You rummaged through your cigar box and selected a Gurkha Vintage

Its peppery flavor reminded you of gunsmoke and good times

You were the last of the hard men before the feminization

Of that grown boy species known as postmodern man

Shuffling off to the basement, you recovered all personal effects

Photo albums, home movies and mementos

You soaked them all with gasoline and they became

Quick burns of time and sentimental kindling for your personal bonfire

Every day, you saw less of the America you knew

Our national history bulging with talking points and game show trivia

Even the bald eagle was obese

You cried out, had there only been time to build a stronger flame

You’d have started with Wall Street, then the news channels, left and right wing

But there was no more time, you heard they were doing battle on Mount Sinai

You went to the shiny trophy case you had cleaned more in ten years than your own body

All morbid self attention at an end, you’d never have to talk about your feelings again

The only counselor you ever needed was Smith & Wesson

Whose bullets viewed him as a more than capable instructor

He’d taught them to make fragments of kamikaze for over a hundred years

You cuddled the snub nose and sobbed into the nickel plates

Disengaged the safety hammer, you couldn’t afford to botch this

Real firearms smell of money and craftsmanship, made in America

Just like the wars we sell to foreign republics

It didn’t used to be this way, but they can keep this country now

You were in such a hurry to depart that you didn’t even leave a note

Who would have read it anyway?

People want to find themselves in fortune cookies, not you

Nothing mattered now but your lover’s steamy breaths of explosive laughter

As it shattered, louder and louder, the commotion in you that had boiled to a soup

And stood in the way of all enterprises, pyrotechnics and brain matter

Laws of Physics transformed the abyss you left into soundbytes

Followed by statistical data, 2nd Amendment excised, another child’s cry epitomized

It was never the guns which stood in our way

 

O Typekey Divider

 

Nero’s Furnace 

Nickel and dime and the sublime, Doctor/Priest Confidentiality.

Fashion plate emergencies, echoes of a sound rupture in the grief cavity, nature/nurture virtues, cognitive platitudes,

Storm for me, outside…

Blushing buffoon, waiting room flirtations, all this while living in a Diet Democracy, now 100% Constitution Free!

We step into the muddy footprints of men who walked on water, channeling the lightning storm, catching a death ray,

Chemtrails leading me to the Blessed Blue Beam.

Meanwhile, on the other side, something is clawing its way through.

Aliens burst from the breasts of millionaire wives, while Paris Hilton roams the L.A. night life with one on a leash.

Congressional melee, the Counselor will not observe regular order until the Judge rescinds his admiral maritime law, that six demon bag of voodoo so powerful it confines stray souls who rejected status quo.

Why is it every lobbyist, swindler, salesman, spokesman claims to represent the people, and none of them ever speak about anything of revelance to me, or anyone else? We are the desert housing the pyramid.

Submit your portfolio of mental disorders. After all, everyone should have their papers in order. The Two Party System fossilizes and creeps into museums everywhere, replaced by the Bi-Polar Party, the Dissociative Party, Obsessive Compulsive Party, Borderline Personality Party, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Party,

Post Traumatic Stress Party

Billions of dollars are funneled between two non-profit organizations (ironic) to fund a message that no one understands or cares about, but we yearn for that familiar three note xylophone and streaming arch that reads: The More You Know. We deserve to feel good about ourselves.

Smoke signals at rush hour , demanding a summation of our collective indulgence, massacre in the midday sun, driving towards a sacred checkpoint, we use alarm clocks to lull us into another form of sleep, the entertainment medium has an applause sign installed and laugh tracks on standby (just in case the audience forgets their line).

I dream of the day that everyone dreams of the day when the IRS and CIA are destroyed, marched through the streets naked, ordered to penance, flanked on all sides by the ghosts of Skid Row and the Bowery.

Because Rome burns, Nero’s furnace thrives

 
 

O Typekey Divider

jeremy ren center

Jeremy Maddux lives in Blountville, TN where he says and does things in the heat of the moment that he didn’t really mean.  Please… forgive him?  He is also Vice President of the Night Writers’ Guild in Kingsport, TN and Co-Editor at Surreal Grotesque magazine.  He doesn’t believe in a democracy or a republic, and hopes to never marry.

 
 

O Typekey Divider

–Art by Navid Sanati

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