Post-Post-Industrial Filth

 

I would harm a fly

but only by accident.

For there is already enough apathy

within these mired and trumped walls

to wipe out a nation of magnanimous spirits.

I step among the filthy, cracked

sidewalk as golden bricks

are shoveled into a white house.

 

The fly in the ointment keeps blaming

the other fly in the ointment.

 

I, the pacifist, finally decide

to lay down in the middle of this land

and die from the unrestricted greed

and noxious air which has enveloped

the entirety of this Human Experience.

 

Socially Acceptable Sadism

 

An eye for an eye

and a Truth for a Truth.

 

You can bandage these war scars

but you cannot hide their botchy skin hues.

 

Vestiges of the innocent blood you so recklessly shed.

 

The eye patch may look like

a fashion accessory but I see through it all.

I glimpse the terror that shines from that missing eye

frightening children with its voided gaze of sheer violence

honed to the point of communicating lunacy and fear.

 

Now, in the aftermath of your chaos,

you play the victim as if there is

no such thing as an American terrorist.

 

Olympus

 

From all corners, from every nook

and cranny, they have come to be here—

to parade and bask in the effervescent shine

pouring through the air—to clasp that air

within their lungs—to thrive and breathe together the air—

such an abundance of various face and skin,

heart and mind—all marching together,

all so human—wearing badges of life

as clothes, a random tapestry of colors and heritage

wove itself among the parade, mingling

together in a sudden swirl of worldly beauty—

it was as if in that brief instant the Earth had owned a collective pulse—

from out the vast collection of flowing and abundant life

it seemed almost possible to behold the meandering stream of Humanity

leading up to the presence of this glorious Ocean before our eyes—

the deep stretching of human lineage seemed almost at hand,

almost at home, almost as if right in front of us.

 

So many different flags gathered as one,

whispering through the air so gorgeously human,

that the sameness and the difference are equally beautiful.

 

Eyeless

 

When your eyes suddenly fell out,

leaving you blind as a bowl of soup,

you frantically began feeling around the floor.

 

On your hands and knees, crawling carefully

to make sure you didn’t crush

one of them with your four-legged steps.

 

Feeling nothing but grunge and grime on the that old linoleum,

you became more panicked with each passing second,

realizing, now that your eyes have fallen out,

just how filthy this world has truly become.

 

Noisy Noose

 

The spirit has slowly evaporated,

gradually turned jaded throughout the years,

quelled, wrecked by the jarring persistence of cacophony

that pours through the veins and hallways of this world.

Inspiration melted to a feeble pulp by the noisy noose

of the boisterous trucks and verbose dogs

that populate the neighborhood, filling the air,

the never-silent wind, with an incessant clamor.

 

The poet’s soul will soon be laid to rest among the din.

 

 

Heath Brougher is the poetry editor for Into the Void, winner of the 2017 and 2018 Saboteur Awards for Best Magazine. He is a multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee and recently won the 2018 Poet of the Year Award from Taj Mahal Review. He has published 6 collections of poetry, the newest being “The Ethnosphere’s Duality” (Cyberwit, 2018).