Joseph M Gant

We Play

carbonic poles

of light refracting,

dancing on a flicker stage.

time beside us,

hell beneath

our leagues of sport-like gathering.

pass the fiddle,

play the drum,

we fall in time to every sound;

electric in sagacity,

light behind the eyes—

embryonic memory

we discharge on the stage.

 

It's A Chemical Song

it's a chemical song

and you were dancing,

rhythm of the afternoon,

melodic and dead,

and you were inside me,

speaking in molecular cadence.

we frowned and then we woke up.

we drowned and then we parted ways—

the score and everything thereafter.

I Wasn't Born to Starve

I wasn't born to starve

in here 

where martyrs clamor,

breadcrumb sins

and eyes of cold 

surveillance— 

ravens' claws of steel and wire,

scarecrows packed with glycerine.

the dinner plates,

the whites of eyes

we cry before we spit and call

the course of cold anxiety.

Joseph M. Gant

Vitamin Z Dream 112412

chocolate silk on sale in the market
where lobster and angel hair meet
and we pray,
how youth is the scarring of tissue
and bedside—
we dream with hollowed eyed
rapture and semen; lust created.
it
rains
on your
heaven, your
canopy grins.

Joseph M. Gant

Luster

whiskey sweats at 10am;
it's Tuesday, and I
really shouldn't leave today.
the sheen of the gun,
this light beside the candle—
luster never was our game;
we shine beside the shallow grave:
angry light electric ghouls
deprived of all that mattered.


Requiem

for all the stars I've seen
and all the stars I've since forgotten,
kissed beneath the sky
and parched of all oblivion,
supernova seraphs bled their tears
and fertilized
a joyous field, giving life not theirs
into these springtime memories of lust, synaptic
and forever woven,
now a tapestry since lain
along the pathway leading nowhere but to here.

Joseph M. Gant-

Stage Left

Moses, the abortionist

parted all you'd ever see.

silly, silly, silly girl,

you stirred the pot with broken thumbs,

bones of splintered solitude.

and all for profit, 

making change

your births 

and your performance art;

we passed the biohazard hat

around the room and listened.

 Tablets

 whatever gets you on,

whatever gets you by the

ebbs of chemical tide and undertow.

waves of lithium roll to drown,

and rising for benzo breaths of sleep

I

piss

the night

and all resolve

to photograph the

dark

away and count what I’ve got left.

Guests

the only angels 

come round here

all use my dope and never call― 

feathers on the coffee table,

empty seats around the fire,

cell phone numbers, bits of paper;

no one here expects a thing

because the liquor watered down,

cocaine cut with laxative,

and furniture brought from the lawn

is not the way to host the night

nor toast the revelation

that waits for us the same.

Joseph M. Gant is the author of the obscenely large poetry collection, Zero Division, which is published by Rebel Satori Press. A scientific glassblower, Gant has no idea how he found himself in the small press world but assumes it bad karma to over think the matter. When not feeding potato chips to his cats, he edits poetry books for S A M Publishing.