Matthew Burnside

scenes from a fractious lucid dream

 
there are ghosts of grandfather clocks clicking in the background of my dream
and five wolves cloistered in the closet, dangling a doorbell song for five
sacrosanct piggies
and I can taste diamond in the back of my throat, melded with a fine corpse
cologne
and up through the milk of my cereal floats tiny razorbladesÅ\I devour a spoonful
and a band in tectonic coats cast elocutionary spells before lighting their
instruments on fire
and in a cathedral made of plastic, the pews fold before a malingered moon
and through a suffocating mist of mourning, I am pinned between spinal aisles
and all is very bright with the brightness of a faith exploding
and in phone booths cluttering an ancient meadow, strangers dial nonsense
numbers
and glinting knives like a school a fish swim through my oceanic anatomies
and an attic of bats graft themselves to my steeples, infecting my belfries
and all of my ex girlfriends gather in my living room
and a battalion of letters engage in trench warfare with numbers
and I clutch a 40,000 volt umbrella in a flash flood mudslide
and I taste the forbidden tartness of a flambéed, crème brûlée lover's heart
and there is a 24 hour foreplay marathon
and a Voodoo Baptism, a Buddhist Exorcism
and I am strung up like a swing set from live power lines
and a greased slide spits me like a child into a sandbox minefield
and my thousand page novel is flung from an overpass
and a pillow case full of snakes is where I rest my egg-infested head
and all the days before I contemplated the concept of eternity haunt me
and all the days before I conceived of an 'I' hunt me
and my spirit radar detector runs dangerously low on batteries
and I am the cud methodically chewed between my own poetic teeth
and I am the orgiastic bleeding of these definable fissures
and I am the salivating gaze of these gorged eyes
and there is a portrait of a portrait of a portrait of God I can only view through
this narrow straw

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Psychic Meatloaf Poetry Journal