I can’t hear you, Tracy, the sun is in my eyes like a strange portrait of light, and I’m stuck in a seashell, drowning in the sound of the ocean. I am staggering like I’m drunk. Slurring my words. Having a seizure over and over again and I just wanted to smile for you and talk about that day at Peace Valley Park when your clothes were plain and everything was going right. When the sun was my ally and everything was green, even the dirt. This strange sphere of a planet dropped me off on the side of the road when I wasn’t looking. I’m at the graveyard now. My tombstone reads rest in pieces. I can’t hear you, Tracy. I can’t even hear myself. Tip toeing into traffic. Knees all crumpled up. How many shades of blue can one man radiate? The clock ticks like Chinese water torture over me and I wish I knew what you were saying, with your hands in your pockets, walking along the grass somewhere.
‘Wake up, Dream boy!’ explores the ordeals of a young teenage boy, Tom, through a dream he had. It combines geographic names, conceptualized characters, metaphysical locations and various thought realms.
Things turned upside down as Tom, in high school, became obsessed with horror films and books that had satanic themes. Anything scary caught his attention and he hardly paid attention in class. Left alone, he looked out for books flooded with zombies, ghosts and other extra-terrestrial entities. Tom’s friends eventually got tired of hearing about his special interest and kept him at arm’s length so they wouldn’t have to hear all of his evil visions of blood-feasting demons, cannibals and dark voices telling people to commit suicide. He became somewhat of a loner.
His mother, Sarah, whose husband had died shortly after Tom’s birth, tried to distract him from the horror. However, she eventually gave up, since she had two other children.
However, Tom’s nightmares played themselves out. For every action, and every obsession of humankind, there is an equal but opposite consequence.
Late Flowers
By Christopher Bernard
Only now have they started to fade.
They had just begun to open
the afternoon I bought them
right before your birthday:
white lilies, red carnations,
clematis that clings to the eaves,
small pink roses,
little daisies,
against a deep green backdrop
of shadowy ferns and leaves.
Over the days that followed
they blossomed like a flourish
from a garden on your little table
in your lovely room
bright and warm and gentle,
the windows opening to the bay
and the northern reach of sunlight
gathering the day.
They opened like young loving,
they opened like the spring,
they opened like your smile
at the sweetness of all beauty:
a simple and artless bouquet.
Only now do they begin
to fade. Who could have known
they opened only for one
who would no longer see them,
in a room where you, in sleep,
the afternoon that followed
the day that you were born
(or so it seems, to the living),
fading long before the flowers,
were gone even as they flowered
beautiful as the day?
For K.
Christopher Bernard’s latest book of poems, The Socialist’s Garden of Verses, has received a stellar review from Kirkus and will be included as a May feature (Best Indie Books of the Month).
Gone like desolation chambers stalled down Main Street, housed in broken palaces, eaten by wolves. Said to be happier without stone and flame, said to be sleepless over trenches and hand pumped electrical diodes.
Screaming into the void.
She said she would not follow anymore. She said she had been made as constellation. She said she could not stand upon a single foot and would not wear a skull upon her head to seat her holy houses.
How can it be that standing straight and staring into emptiness has become a criminal offence?
How can it be that wishing to be sold as soil is open to the breaking pace of move and move and move!
How can it be that as she speaks she goes on loosing threads throughout her eyes until she simply sits and contemplates, finding enlightenment in figures of silver and gold?
How can we sit on grasses weightlessly and worthlessly, speaking tongues, waiting for projections to arrive in their abundance, screeching and embracing as they come and go at our command?
Wait I cannot see your eyes, I cannot walk this mezzanine and stride too perfectly without these tired lips.
How do you preach and wake so naked in the house of holy blood and money, slaked of thirst and waiting for the broom to help you sweep the floor?
Help me end this endless gloom, help me weep upon this stone, this sand that broke from stone.
Gone I said. Gone.
One Hundred and Fifty Thousand Dollars
Bloodshed against this vast canal wearing aimlessly the notion of hereditary opalescence
Martyr Martyr Martyr Martyr
Hear the drip-drip-drip of iron clad boats carrying these serfs addressed to ridiculous superfluous whatever whatever whatever
Take electrode and hide beneath systemic happenstance probing find triangulation through lips lips lips
Take car battery and sit within consultation reply injecting fluid locate triangulation here here here
Take speed velocity and live without pliable elbow sitting malformed love triangulation now now now
A Jaw Complete
Slack rope and add to evolution slip and fall as metallurgy leads the acid break
Stymied without skin rocking on the bell as shore and shoreline please the carnivore
Lamp shine and water slip sanded on the edge positive against negative against positive against negative
Repeat Ad infinitum
Sadhu Dreams
Are you waking tired Sadhu have you seen the emblems falling from their perches take your ribbon hang it from the bent spoke
Are you silent waking Sadhu have you touched regression and its parted lips place the emblem by the river dancing as a bird
Bio: Nathan Anderson is a writer from Mongarlowe, Australia. He is the author of the poetry book Deconstruction of a Symptom (Alien Buddha Press) and has had work appear in Otoliths, Gone Lawn and elsewhere. You can find him at nathanandersonwriting.home.blog or on Twitter @NJApoetry.
