Image: Unsplash, downloaded (https://unsplash.com/photos/gg8f7FLbMs0) 03.06.2023.
Maps
Feed me music from the cut of your tongue
the black of your lungs
I need notes for salvation
I need noise like a plague
Spin your soft spells on my skin
live wire spine
I need a song for the darkness
I need a dance when the hour grows lame
Designed in the Lap of God
I will hold you
(tightly/precisely)
in the symmetry
of your own perfect salvation
(angled by angels)
I’m not sure if the wound
has (finally) fully healed
or if I just
bit too often
and have grown numb (desensitized)
to the taste/temperature
of blood on my lip/tongue/mouth/flesh
pillar of stoic
concrete
adamantium nerves
w/subtle
shades of (foxtrot)
silver
streaked in
to paint signs of wisdom
through the ages
On Getting Close and Casting Out
The only way to kill paranoia is to embrace it
birds and leaves fill the trees
but only one will be staying the season
If God is always watching you might as well dance
promises and judgments bundled in the deal
and some will save
and some will scorn
and some will never
scab over
This world sold out long before we were born
baubles and trinkets and platinum facelifts
but I would gladly carry
both bags under these eyes
for what they have seen
for what they have shed
for what they have
wept out in blood
and fire
The only way to kiss paranoia is with the tongue
About the Author: Scott Thomas Outlar is originally from Atlanta, Georgia. He now lives and writes in Frederick, Maryland. His work has been nominated multiple times for both the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. He guest-edited the Hope Anthology of Poetry from CultureCult Press as well as the 2019-2023 Western Voices editions of Setu Mag. He is the author of seven books, including Songs of a Dissident (2015), Abstract Visions of Light (2018), Of Sand and Sugar (2019), and Evermore (2021 - written with co-author Mihaela Melnic). Selections of his poetry have been translated and published in 14 languages. He has been a weekly contributor at Dissident Voice for the past eight and a half years. More about Outlar's work can be found at 17Numa.com.
Comments