App-athetic
(1) Strange how you arrive with no address in mind. Objects begin to misbehave, clocks to bend and stretch. And then a procession of pallbearers carrying empty coffins enters – creased, stained, stoop-shouldered. The century feels a lot longer than a hundred years. (2) Facebook announces a suicide prevention app. If the heart stops beating, it sends a text message that says, “I’m dead at x and y coordinates.” Emptiness is now, suddenly, a monument. And no one is sure why. (3) It’s good the children were asleep. We had a lot of time to be neurotic, my wings flapping, your dress like an ink blot. All the colors were unstable. After I prayed the way you said, I not only got a better car, but it was bright red.
Life Without Parole
(1) Women, take note. There will never be silence. Autumn is for bells – and a crow-like bird
that carries an ominous egg. (2) To hell with facts. There is no truth. There is only perception.
Some see a kind of concentration camp blending into its surroundings. Some – and no one knows who exactly or how many – see the face of Jesus in a slice of toast. (3) The only light streams in from artificial hells. What you see before your eyes today is being repeated across the cosmos. As you walk through room after room, it becomes clear that the worst has happened, that you can live with the worst. There is dance in the roiling turbulence.
All Rights. Howie Good.
Howie Good's latest poetry books are The Horse Were Beautiful (Grey Book Press), Famous Long Ago (Laughing Ronin Press) and The Bad News First (Kung Fu Treachery Press).
