1] Robbed of sleep I can only feel The iron bed of your steel will And sleepless lie upon my cot 5 Meditating over what I have not 2] Although we don't know Reality's basis Time is not a stasis For (God knows) in Life's whirlpool 10 Each one goes from sage to fool 3] "Thank you for breaking my heart, you sonofabitch" You're Welcome, then Is where we must begin 15 For the breaking of the heart Is the very worst part 4] her eyes a monster's beauty her laugh contagious fire 20 her heart too finely lonely her breath a wilderness of desire
From the collection "The Soft Assault"
Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]
More information available on gregglory.com.
Dearest Jane,
Unfamiliar places make me long for your familiar body. An ardent urgency I had not suspected distance could supply has brought your sugarpot to a sudden boil among the peach boughs. Tonight, you spoke of "living in the now,"- and how I long to let my soul do so! My heart is a history of desiring- desiring so strongly that it crushes whatever comes to it (good or ill) until that thing becomes integral with itself. This is my meteoric bliss and patchwork, bastard and disastered composition. And yet- how deeply and completely I long for thee! Dark vintage of my nights, coiled bedmate of my days- our hours toiling in the sheets or embroiled by our tongues, I long for them all again! The crown of the root of my cock has been too long unbruised by your cunning junctions.
The Gossamer Gauntlet
"You are a ruby encased in granite." - Rumi
Dear Quixotic Fox: I know that you said my poem horrified you. In the poem, I was trying to give the classic abstraction of "Gender" a voluptuous body. I also know that you are afraid of the verities we have already shared and which we can share again in any moment you want to pick up a phone and be in my ear and in my heart. It is your own fear that stops you, and nothing else.
Listening Hard,
Ruby Granite
Life's Too Short For Unsent Love Letters
Jane,
No. You should not see me. It's impossible that you should. For, you see, I love you. I love you like the open sky, endless and magnificent and empty. It's not reasonable. It has nothing to do with control or wise decision-making, and much to do with hurt and with joy- both equally. That cannot be for you. It's impossible that I should love you, that I should have these feelings and these wishes for one whose heart I do not know- who is a mountain in its mists, observable but unknowable. It is not possible that I should be able to ascend it; neither may I reside at its foot in peace- it's shadow has touched the shadow of my soul, and I am shaped by this glimmering darkness called life. Stay where your life is all yours and none of it is given away. That is best. Not this folly, this parade, this ignorance, this mystery. Abide and be well.
Gregg
Living Alone and Dying Alone
Mole,
Living alone and dying alone is something that all of my "artist" friends have had to come to terms with-- and its the one fucking thing that kicks me in the ass all the time and that I steadfastly hate. It's the worst shit to me. But everyone with a point-of-view feels it. A lordly friend of mine says its what gives him the courage to stay married (scary)-- because he is SO alone. Alice B. Talkless always has put forth that point of view-- utter alienation. Yet-- what a crock! If I believed that, my good Mole, I would drink every day, souse my brain and sauce my heart with soul tunes and blues, buy velvet sheets, rape anything that walked, piss on the innocent, and beat on the sleeping. What guides me is not what I "know" about ANYthing-- but what I hope for everything. And, since my imagination CAN, literally, encompass the known and unknown universe-- I've got a lot of responsibilities when it comes to making that imagined universe dream itself to truth.
Yrs. In Glory,
gregglory
From the collection "The Soft Assault"
Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]
More information available on gregglory.com.
Sick ink vomited belly up on the throw rug as if I had forgiven it, the swallowed ball 5 of my poisonous poem, a loaded ode to limitlessness and light- What trash! as if the sky- vapid and superior in its imperial blues didn't know how to bite! 10 Mistakes, mistakes! The pen's a miracle of mayhem, wild slips of a wrist once slitted; the bleeding, careering nib, a molt of details in the schizophrenic flow: 15 my mangy life, my frozen embryo carelessly cast from the shelf, unlidded and palely little. The cornflower fists 20 ache to begin, the watery lungs two skinned, amniotic fish. A bonfire, a bonfire! Something huge and ruinous with real red in it! That's what goes, what really goes 25 with this stone decor, this face hung in a mirror slashed to tears. Heat, heat anything to exhaust this caustic blank in my being, torn calendar- 30 Journals, drawn loves, alien lines poems mouthed from poems -dead-weight papers pushed to a death heap a Jew harvest at Dachau- Perfect things 35 as final as a corpse, ashes to ashes. The matchsticks itch to finish it. Irritable Rubicon 40 of lava, language vulcanized on language, I cross you languidly. I am nearly asleep in the oxygenless air. I am tired, tired, tired of curses, tired of cures 45 tired of the alphabet. The wall, infinite sheet, turns intense as an oven, the nails must be melting... And here I stand 50 awash and exhausted, perfumed in the rolls of corpse-smoke, words burned to whorls. Too tired to live, to die, to anything kilned in skin.
From the collection "The Soft Assault"
Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]
More information available on gregglory.com.
This is the husband, a stone Ramses head indifferent and flecked with flies, with lies, austere as the sunset that gilds his despair. He's different, this husband, he's changing 5 songless and bald, moulting his plumage undoing his hues. Long ago he finished with sending me poems, his pen as dry and stark as a husk. Done are the days of ripping the earth 10 to snare me a fist of flared flowers that peeped, in our noontime, so "naive et charmant" from my ratsnest of hair. Eons back in the loaf-warm tome of romance, he shut himself off like a faucet 15 from my teasing yeast, my rise as regular as the calendar. He no longer bleeds in straight silver lines, stopped are the drops once poignant as years. His tongue is no longer a spongeable pumice to leaven or sharpen my sex upon. 20 Turned off are the nights of spasms and gladness, torn away like kites by unbearable thunder. Stoked stiff in his study with his load of self-pity he chugs through his Churchill in his stagnant recliner, a thrumb drubbed on Nietzche, and a pinky in Zeno, 25 dividing and slicing our lives into zeroes.
From the collection "The Soft Assault"
Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]
More information available on gregglory.com.
Casual, usual A face floats on its wavering stalk; Look at it talk, talk, talk. Watch it shimmer in the mirror 5 And dissolve, a tactless absence, a sore, Hole for soul, A nothing that wounds and wounds With its teeth, its tongue, gassy solvents That pick and ply til all's undone. 10 Look at it- loaded and goading, A sucking contusion, wary and scarlet Winking open only to eat And eat and eat. Watch how it swallows, grinding its stone molars 15 On a glass eye, a wooden heel, Whatever the survivor had found To replace itself with- a quick fix, A snatch of branches, sticky love, Any useable glue; 20 Anything at hand, at heart, anything That would do. The flaccid face bloats on its spoils. Bigger than mirrors, it floats its way out. Grandly, hatefully, 25 Empty of everything but plunder and hunger.
From the collection "The Soft Assault"
Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]
More information available on gregglory.com.
You hand me a cup, bland porcelain Brimming with little liquids, little swirls That mix without melding. Edges meet my lips. 5 "Swallow." A helpful hand wipes the excess with a damp cloth. This medicine is steeped in piss-poison! Injectable lies That slide beneath the skin, scatter and assume 10 The airy shape of my veins, My life-lines, and then coalesce in a tangle, Intrude and lump in my heart, silk knot, waxy casket That breaks in the calcified air Displaying a dead baby, 15 A red statuette Drowned by lies and poison, swimming in it! O what shall it do, what shall it do That once was innocent blue, Clean and pure and crimeless as you? 20 Shall it lie in state, attended and indifferent, Surrounded by suits and long faces, The lamentable murmuring of men, the shriek Of a mistress tearing her hair? Or shall it rise, rouge moon, rise 25 Blind and on fire, and show us the night? Show hidden things: faces twisted as paper, Abominations, truces with witches, Suburban ploys and plots, the adorable whores Who live on the block? 30 If we look at it burning, the heart on fire Will it show us just what we desire? Will it show me? Will it show you? Will it? Will it? 35 Will it?
From the collection "The Soft Assault"
Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]
More information available on gregglory.com.
We've landed at the restaurant. Imagine that! Plastic seats and an oiled eggplant head Eating itself with a painted fork, with kerchief tucked in. A feast! A feast of cow-skulls, 5 Staring and hard, a mad Egyptian emblem of "brief life." Oh, I'd as leif Noose my neck On your oniony tongue and grief As eat the bitter sprigs laid on my plaid plate. 10 The yogurty folds of melted milk-slugs Slopped to a standstill, a yellow hill, The maggoty disaster of a vegan salad! Yet here we sit, the paralyzed pair, Hump and stump, 15 Too drunkenly sober to ever get up. Who but us has smashed our lives to pieces? One piece, two pieces.... Oh, too many pieces to count or fix! This one looks like post-war France, Maryland that; 20 All of our magic plans have gone Back into the magician's black hat. Timid rabbit, silent as me, Already minced and brewed in the mulberry stew You vomited in the bathroom- 25 Half an hour, and almost didn't come back. Tell me, tell me, One finger, or two? How many hooks or claws does it take To snake your guts into the toilet 30 And water your eyes awake?
From the collection "The Soft Assault"
Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]
More information available on gregglory.com.
The Yoni in her rictus sucks Lingam with her million licks; Like and unlike they dance and drain The sense of sophistry and the heart of pain. 5 Glad carousels lunge where sex has lingered, Whirling in memory what had been fingered; The touch of Life that touches us Commends us crawl above the dust.
From the collection "The Soft Assault"
Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]
More information available on gregglory.com.
Half animal and man in my shambling frame I ache toward the open doorway; wounded and wronged in my make-believe flesh, blazed and amazed by a million teardrop eyes, 5 my every ear alert to illumination in the star-flying dark and flak daylight- I hunch against the wind of forever come.
From the collection "The Soft Assault"
Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]
More information available on gregglory.com.
I keep falling into holes and trying to stay there. -Theognis Holes split open like smiles, wet and black as a line of paint, 5 full of spectacular textures, like current berries that cling to my fingers, to my hounding mouths, to my wicked dick. My pubes are adorned with the hard small seeds, spit out and germed with turmeric jelly. 10 The hairs stand forth bright as a bearing holly bush, gemmed like a juniper with seeds and needs. And there, nearby, like the sand at the end of the slide, hunkers the hole, the sop, the punch-out, 15 bitch ditch and oblivion as final as an out-push of breath. I have fallen a thousand thousand times tripped by a mirrory eye, a laugh, the sudsy tug of an insult, 20 a breath as coal and nitrous as a cigarette, smokes that exit a sigh as silk exits a spider's belly. I have heard and I have fallen. I have seen and I have slipped. Again and again, in and in, 25 Down and down I go, shucking my parachute into crowded clouds, removing my wiry limbs to increase my speed into the fishy abyss, the feathery cleft that opens like the vowels of a moan 30 in the middle of a woman. There's an arm, a foot, a useless knee as backwards as a bird's, an ass as smooth as a cameo unrolling and unreeling. 35 Clothes shudder off like smoke. I am leaving it all behind like a will or a fire sale, getting rid, getting rid, to fit into this hole that opens below, 40 black and silk as a magician's hankie. Faster and faster I fall my hat pulled off in a flap and flutter, my head yanked back like a yo-yo. 45 Springy fingers twine my greasy curls. The angels go on about light and space and eternity like a clean room that never dirities, linen and palm trees and Ikea settings that never end fresh as dry cleaning, 50 airy and forever and empty. But I want the hole. I want that plummet of gums, the chummy manure of descent, that spasming black, that tongue of hunger, 55 the window in my stomach screaming wide, the tears, the million million tears like bent nails, bent and abandoned from nailing the window open, again and again to feel the black rising though you 60 as you fall.
From the collection "The Soft Assault"
Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]
More information available on gregglory.com.
I stare at my figure too dull to doll it up with knots, wry ribbons that stitch the wild hair into a tail. 5 The hips flare out from the belly sack, a hairy flood of becomings, selves I may invite back for a drink... Incipient breasts 10 flow molded from mounded shoulders, nipples stiff to be bitten. It's womanish, except for the blowfish. Figgy balls 15 complacent as labia, shed placenta from some god-afterbirth. The dill a willie soft as a loaf or foggy forethought, clitoral when licked 20 by a mind or a lip anything that drugs the blood into the long cave, the manger hung with drums, a terrified beating 25 that surges and squeezes. A swallowed heart would be less insistent, more nutritive, provide a maturer moaning than this hollow stick 30 with its found sounding, a seashell dragging its echo. Hot, prophetic folds saunter simmer-shimmeringly, lacteal, erect. 35 The wet coast solders its salts against the groin, sand and fire and thighs. A night, a womb floats her sewn awning over us, 40 a marmalade softness constricted to eloquence. Stars hung out to dry, zen observers, mark our dartings 45 like twins in the linen. Love, love swells and sweats between us, cloisonné oysters stripped 50 from their bone shells, the shellac of evolution returned to nudity. Somewhere, hidden below the neckline of waters 55 that define us, my semen rot and wait, rot and wait, acid prisoners pale to escape.
From the collection "The Soft Assault"
Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]
More information available on gregglory.com.
Stirred eyes, lambent hands Grope, stroke and lock On the God-prod, the poker-pole, while red stone robes, Judicial and exact, flow slow blood floods 5 From neck to heart to cock. Your mouth moued to an exquisite squid Flicks, sips and whips The nodding blood-knot. Purple, imperial Whirl unwrung above stung-hung nuts, 10 The daisy-anus, the lumped legs. How like a heart it hurts, Circular spurt and jerk Into an emptiness of spit the size of a head, Glow-globe toned with bruised velvets 15 And hot as a hiss or a piss. This is the her that turned me twenty. This is the act that soured all honey. This is the night that cut away the day. This is the feel that cancelled the real. 20 This is the time that mimed eternity. Alive and dead on the slab again, Burned, turned and horned I made your waded pleasure feather wetness; A fortune of fine-knit phillips ticked 25 Your broody veins insane on the scripted sheets.
From the collection "The Soft Assault"
Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]
More information available on gregglory.com.
O I have been to Lyonnesse One hundred miles away; I have been gone to Lyonesse For many and many a day. 5 When I returned from Lyonnesse Upon a rainy day, I found my town and found my home Had changed while I was away. In what way all things had changed 10 I'd be hard-pressed to say, But things that were things were no longer things Since I had been away. My regret is long 15 Where I once belonged And hardly can I see When the hours gong What is left of what I've left In Lyonnesse by the Sea 20 And what at home from where I'd gone Is left of what has been.
From the collection "The Soft Assault"
Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]
More information available on gregglory.com.
Put mandolins where monkeys are To screech their souls up to a star Bananas and citrons in a deep dish Chocolate shadows and the sunlight's kiss 5 The revolved aroma of a hole Charms the sense that would scold
From the collection "The Soft Assault"
Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]
More information available on gregglory.com.
The scenery of the ribs is a stage-set: medieval coils of veins, cracked flames and the abysmal bellows, 5 the gold heart going like a pocket-watch, muffling a photoed face in its hands. Heart! O Heart! Look at the ruins you have maneuvered! the hothouse monster who smashes the panes 10 and leaves the scene in spasms. Mysteries stiffen the pinions of God's black bat, dark Lucifer, soiling the filigree paneling 15 as he loiters, fingering a silk cigarette. He's plausible, a skirmish of smokes and dishwater, lonely for a light or a toke.... A molten, mirrory backdrop 20 floats his eyes through the chest like train-lights; A few, stray, unused thoughts flashing and dangling assemble the scarecrow who puts goodness to flight.
From the collection "The Soft Assault"
Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]
More information available on gregglory.com.
good morning dear blossom, the dawning's white bosom 5 is clearing a place for your health for your face whose smile is wealth
From the collection "The Soft Assault"
Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]
More information available on gregglory.com.
Shards of naked eloquence, permanent acquaintance in a glance, an isosceles triangle constructed by chance as when the world falls together 5 on the disheveled bed. Shapes of light and greatness confound the eye to quietness and all the rest as well, unless, confessing naked eloquence 10 and stretched to a howl I stand with my back to the midnight clocks and drop my cock to the caustic waters, 15 my soul to spawn.
From the collection "The Soft Assault"
Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]
More information available on gregglory.com.
A bhudda-man emerged in my dreams. Orange sherbet draped his limbs, His head a mahogany dollop. His fist contained a shard, a glimmer, 5 Simple and sharp as his easy smile That outshone his indigo eyes. I held my palm up, outward, warding Nothing, welcoming nothing, A new-painted moon-palm with five drippy runs. 10 The knife Entered me simply and neatly, Dividing my five into a three and a two. Sudden blood, hot and narcotic, Glistened the fingered rifts of identity- and I, I 15 Bowed to thank him, kiss his head The solemn mahogany Made of my desire for death.
From the collection "The Soft Assault"
Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]
More information available on gregglory.com.
So circular evening arrives again Sending down her silver lies at midnight Into the sleeping mind of woman,- A goddess knotted on her own fecundity, 5 A fullness and dirtiness in which all fantasies root. My blunt foot has numbed in its soleless boot. And yet, there is no anchor for us in this evening, No hold, no place to contain us, To comfort us; no chink in which we may 10 Fail and be forgotten. No hole for our seeding. We are here in the evening alone together, Here in the bleak nothing that opens us. I look up, up, to where the black stops. The stars are wise of their taut untruths 15 And wink when we do stare at them, Staring like a mother at her liar child Who winks and grimaces and starts away To play and pleasure in the darkest wood.
From the collection "The Soft Assault"
Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]
More information available on gregglory.com.
One mated and angelic eve With the book flared across your knees, Eyes guided eyes and elbows posed For four brown nipples to squeak and see. 5 I knew the bell's praise from your lifted lips Would sound my soul awake; I knew each bit of bitch with a searing nail Would seal my damaged fate. Stiff ministers of a cultish creed 10 We repeated the stolen words, Puked up tongue and black and naked need Until our needing heard. Together with stars and eyes half-open We scratched the wrinkled skull's emporium 15 And traded hands and nimbly led Each other back to bed.
From the collection "The Soft Assault"
Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]
More information available on gregglory.com.
I have come and gone many times And turned my soul upon a rhyme As if the finest joke on earth's To be always beginning where I was. 5 Troubled troubadour and truculent whore, Soldier, sailor and tailor and more; Each rotating mood or face Another fated deck shot by an ace. The several major arcana and their signs 10 Cast their shadows on my soul; Sour and sweet they they cross and meet And their friction boils my bones. Bird or man or querlous bee, Or gladdened tangle of these three I am stuck on 15 Winter's blankest branch Or come to Summer's triumphant tree: Hung, flung, or even undone Our lives' alliance shifts upon a breeze Straying or staying like some mourner's melody 20 Upon the upright mystery. With ignorance and assurance I strut; With innocence and wickedness I walk; With whatever measure I may I go; Indisputable and bouyant I stalk. 25 Mother shadow and darkest seed Direct from the nothing above And sink to the nothing below All the lightness that I may need. Cajoling aueroles of flowers 30 From these honey-bloods I bleed Dripped to ground beyond my powers Until light and time a resurrection freed. Calliopes' sighs and a lover's tropes Rope my myriad thoughts to things; 35 Tied together what need I fear Save a lesser tension in the strings? I have come and gone many times And turned my soul upon a rhyme As if the finest joke on earth's 40 To be always beginning where I was.
From the collection "The Soft Assault"
Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]
More information available on gregglory.com.
This hiss, this effortful fumbling at the spinning wheel, A whirl of confused gold and one fine thread Pure and tense as silence Flies from the gnome's knobbed fingers that pull at the flow 5 Thin as a hummingbird's urine; Masses of fineness Gather at his neglected boots, clouds of extravagance Churned from dirty straw. And now 10 A maiden's motions move through the loops; pinching, stitching, She weaves a molten cloak for His Majesty's child, The sun king. She uses every trick in the book to perfect it: her smile, Her looks, her intricate skills, her willfullness 15 Honed on a husband of rock. She shakes out the cloak. Millioned glimmers Shiver down its breaking back. She's proud. The gnome's eyes shine black. "Magnifique! Too bad your son shall never have it." 20 Her face falls to scars, irritations. Her eyes cross. "Oh... oh... Rumplestilskin!" she cries Into the surprised sound of silence.
From the collection "The Soft Assault"
Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]
More information available on gregglory.com.
The face is porcelain, sourceless perfection towed from the cemetery whites of the sea 5 and spit upon by lime, cremated to this coldness, this clarity. Blank statuette, unriven by sweetness or sorrow, smooth as a blind moon 10 or dew on a cactus! Follicleless, is this the end of wrath and worry? Does a wild rabbit shred cries below your shine? 15 Anatomy entrapped by a sheen, mechanism steeled to a polish, there are such depths in your surfaces! A star could not finish it. No sun 20 can blanche you beyond what you are. Limitless glares anger at you larynx that never once hurt open for air. How does it feel to be in there 25 seamless and beaming? Tell me, tell me! Open your mouth and bleed a God-spout, a riot.
From the collection "The Soft Assault"
Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]
More information available on gregglory.com.
Sewn together in a pouch of purrs Hand on breast and mouth on thigh We cannot make our moaning words Or hiss a thesaurus into our kisses' sighs. 5 Each sight of sex that turns us double Or kinks or Xed zones to a core Of double yolks where trapped tongues bubble About the regions our mouths rub sore, Undoes our encyclopedias of saying, 10 Erases summations to addition's first tick And cancels accounts we could be laying In the hollow of a kiss' lick.
From the collection "The Soft Assault"
Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]
More information available on gregglory.com.
This is the scrape and scar of disarming sin, The God scrub.- Filtered pallors hurricane the holy void Empty and innocent 5 And quite as frank as an open mirror or storm-eye. Oz-God with his cattle prod And tanned hands replete with treats Tells us in Schonenberg tones We must wash or wear out. 10 Old hopes, old hands, old wings Weaken and retard my rinsing and rising; What held me up now halts me. My father's feathers that lightened my marrow Now endow my face with suffocation 15 As thick as Icarus' kisses. All these withered glimmers and subtle shines Impinge and peel off in the mud; All Earth is crowded with 'down.' And I, I rise in rain 20 My high lungs two cauldrons of flammible gold, My hope as strong as a bird's hollow bones.
From the collection "The Soft Assault"
Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]
More information available on gregglory.com.
What are we made of who made ourselves? Our hands pull at the stitches like petals "love me, love me not" until our lovable monster lies 5 undone and red and ruined as a pile of raw scarves. Quick, quick, take these flicked cracks, the ones under the brows and by the eyes, or the one jaggedy one as long as a sigh 10 long and nipple-purple by the targeted heart and pinch it and knit it and tie a tight knot, knowing that the guts have already gone out of it, the heaving mongrel mess the contusions and bruises 15 and god knows what that make us human and helpless and work. Where our kisses have stung a rosary of burns remains; What had happened back when the lightning struck 20 and love arose? What surged and gurgled on the steel table? What awoke with a shock to see the operating room's sugary whites, the corners as sharp as a smirk? What shuddered and blinked 25 at the rubber and tubular helper hands so anxious to gag it and glue it, to take it to us and keep us together like a heap of busted toys in a box? The surgical light as intense as a sty 30 blinked on above us like a faulty halo. Notice the choosing of the bones, the supple back, the wavery feet, the bland big bone of the face, blank as a lollipop. Notice the choosing of the bones, 35 very important and very proper, stark popsickle sticks stuck in two frozen lives, rounds and mounds to hang ourselves on, display our guts like sausages and our smiles like carved lard.
From the collection "The Soft Assault"
Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]
More information available on gregglory.com.
A whirlwind in a Thrift Store assembles nothing although it suggests a shape. A bowtie, swung on air, flutters without function because no neck is there. 5 There is no bleak coordinate to rally the flags and flairs; no hairy simpleness untwisted when bras and socks litter ascending stairs. Eyeglasses doubt their doing 10 (no matter how pinched and proud their glare) when through their frames of hardened ether can go no softened stare. But a belch out of Brahma that moves through our tube of voice 15 (no matter the nakedness of our stance) can clear the spirit's molten soma or club bright diligence to trance. Red suspenders written by a finger on some supple manikin we love 20 leaves a mental trace that lingers far longer than any snapping does. Yes, clothing is the vocab, the richness of what's said, the silken bounty of hot balloons, 25 the droll draperies on the bed. But it is the Alpha and Omega of eye and heart and ear that fill out their airy outline with the grammar of a dare.
From the collection "The Soft Assault"
Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]
More information available on gregglory.com.
A scream arrives as eloquent as a silent film, Chaplin eating his shoe from hunger, us eating our screams from love. 5 Has it been so long since our mouths had found the strength to swim at each other like fish and kiss? Water whooses from our guts into water, urine and fishshit deflating from us, 10 the sound a no-sound of silence. So long and so hungrily we moved toward each other, paired plants heliotroped on our sunny dope and ache for greatness, a spine of thorns elevating the ticklish emptiness of a rose. 15 I cared for no God taller than your caress, your hot neck caught on my calluses. The crevices where we creased together like folded skin melted in a blue matchstick are full of crossed eyes and crossed hairs, 20 backwards assassins that cannot see what they are killing but fumble for the tricky trigger by habit blindly as worms. Together we mouth the sound of "Pow" 25 like children pulling their fingers on air.
From the collection "The Soft Assault"
Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]
More information available on gregglory.com.
The voice that puts my world to worse Sits alien in the ear. The juggling hand that hoists my heart I exile to a hammered bier. 5 The eye that sees my face as sodden I pluck and damn its tears. The ear that hears my each word a curse Whispers its own fear. When that eye, that hand, that crooked ear 10 Misperceive my frame, I crack each red rib and fish within To kiss her soul again.
From the collection "The Soft Assault"
Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]
More information available on gregglory.com.