The Hip-Hop Mermaid
Risen from the warring shore
comes what survives the night’s blear
of human shards scattered
over earth’s sallow brow.
Fate clinging to my barnacled flesh
for the watery bower dawn breaks
over us, she said, snapping her tail.
Somehow she got into the pool
When nobody was looking,
with beaching sepia flotsam
bubbling, what bespoke ineffable
old rose–tinted morning crags
from another clime & century.
While sea worms its way into
My backyard, drenching me
into some searing sex scenes
with this nubile & naked mermaid?
I’ll leave it to your imagination,
For we tell lies beyond reason
in swirling sands of mud frost
turning like dark pudding
as the hungry elements yowl.
I devoured the battered remnants
Of her glistening fins, I plunged
into grief’s plundered port of sin.
I searched for music in her body
in this bed of tangled seaweed
songs do not linger anymore
to tantalize the jazz singer’s lips:
swelling the tide of my dementia
where we are now dissolving
& borne by lingering pathogens
only shallow sea gods are bitten by,
I feed the bloodlust’s swishing vein
Sinking my shipwrecked sullen craft
==========
Spiked Heels of Lunar Light
Does the echo of light fading
still reflect the concrete wave
before a silent sound banishes
candid movements about you
of rainfall smearing streets.
While your red glossy high heels
staccato-tap glistening sidewalks
before mist slithering dawn comes:
a moment’s elocution of elements
finer than your own existence as
a precious filament ignites your eyes
the angels of death dissipate before.
You are the chosen one, Moon Dog
trailing ire over jaundiced time
nearby my gibbous hidden body
your heels excavate heavenly flesh
blood-red under moonlit rays,
& beneath distant overhead clouds
Hot moisture cuts the Velveeta
you spread over perfumed breasts
before imbibing my fallen presence.
Food for dirty thoughts feeding
Old moon-dust beneath your feet,
My yearning cries now echo across
another walkway where footfalls
stop in soundless shadows
beyond black mascara slashes
your sightless eyes redress
in naked night’s cruciform raiment
==========
Eulogy for the Analog of Lost Desire
Only my sex in the ellipsis of your mouth
equals the sum of my disenchantment
reading your scurrilous epiphany at 4 a.m.,
& knowing how fucked it is for you
to post a revealing ad on Craig’s List
in order to write a book later about it;
& all your forays into the lusty disorders,
As weeds dying on the lawn of your desire
devotees of all lost amour aspire to,
hoping to escape banal boundaries
by extolling perversions to greater ends.
You text my acolyte unscathed by hate,
forsaking pristine years of bygone innocence.
Now the cock crows at the death throes
of one’s trendy sex life in empurpled drag.
No pill or superlative drug resurrects
the banished truth of old renegade heats
when there’s nothing left to betray us,
just your once revered cocky-capon god
sucking love’s mitosis of invisible microbes
==========
Symphony with a Severed Head
White light glistens in a vase of shadow
buds suspended by watery phlegm
Of the intoxicated grandpa:
I drink the syrup of palliating Scotch
Listening to domestic disputes outside
a window dust-splotched by faulty sprinklers.
The squatter snoring nearby the tool shed
isn’t exactly a meditating guru for quietus!
No, his curse-ridden dreaming is a diatribe
of bad rap lyrics damning his Jezebel.
(The one with a bustier so silver-spangled
with nipple rings, all very shiny
Under his mental door mat of nightly stupor).
Blue light in a bottle of 100% ambrosia,
forever amber this Thursday evening
Marred by police sirens & screams.
Outside cops investigate the premises,
but I’ll be damned if I’ll go out there
Like a concerned citizen of Twitter
with my cell phone video recording all.
Let the complex go to hell in a handbasket
bulging with the last dead rapper’s head,
Severed & still bleeding-out dumb aqua
until the saints come marching in.
Peter Magliocco writes from Las Vegas, Nevada, where he’s been active in the small press as editor, poet, and artist for years. He has recent poetry in Pulp Poets Press, Literary Yard, Dyst, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Jellyfish Whispers, The Pangolin Review, and elsewhere. His most recent poetry book is Particle Acceleration on Judgement Day from Impspired Press.
