CAMP ATHEISM
Forgive us our trespasses because they’re boring.
The mental declension: smoke gets in your heart.
Getting on your high horse vs. getting high on horse.
The determinants of fire: incense and sentiment.
“While I picture hope, I think of memory,” said
Kierkegaard. Corporate torpor is now universal.
Clichéd as a butterfly as an emblem of becoming.
Clichéd as a blossom as a metaphor of maturation.
A poem is a mirror, he said reflectively.
Remove cap before putting on headware.
Do not operate while urinating.
And the bland plays on.
A tourniquet of roses.
We are not alone, not as alone as we think.
No one dies standing up.
J’ RECLUSE
Blood refuses to fill the eyes since tears
have decided to vacate the heart since
breath has asked to move away since
muscle is refusing to obey the brain
since thinking is leaking from every pore.
What happened? Fitzgerald called it
“lesion of enthusiasm.” Baudelaire called
it “the shadow of the wing of madness”
passing over. Nijinsky called it “love”
and “God.” Groddeck called it “It.”
What do you call it, you who look at me
with ineffable eyes, you who come to me
defended with grief, you who call to me
from the outskirts of fog, you who, wrapped
in unhappiness, continue to endure?
Bill Yarrow is the author of Blasphemer (Lit Fest Press 2015), Pointed Sentences (BlazeVOX 2012), and four chapbooks. His poems have appeared in many print and online magazines including Poetry International, RHINO, Contrary, DIAGRAM, FRiGG, Uno Kudo, Gargoyle, and PANK. He is a Professor of English at Joliet Junior College.
–Art by Karamelo
–Art by Mariya Petrova-Existencia