The World according to Poetry 4: Joseph M. Gant

Poems

Short Cut to a Girl’s Heart

A blossom on the eve of Spring,
The feathers of a swan.
My angel born beneath the silver
Lakes of ancient Avalon.
Soft as any budding rose,
My beauty so sublime . . .
the girl i wrote this for is dead
she bled, so i can end this rhyme.
Pushed at Both Ends

Fountain by the riverside
Why’d ya go and turn to dust?
Everything’s a sham.

Come and
Play upon this pipe, Sweet
Prince, you fuck who
Bound me to the
Rock to burn,
Melt,
Hit,
Come to life in stars . . .
To feel the moments
Count the dying down.

Time is money. Money time
So why can’t I afford my watch?
Everything’s a sham.

(previously published in Sex and Murder)
Uncounted Cost of Samaya

blood on the dorje,
tears in the bell.

loneliness invades my space
with questions I should not
need to answer. and so I
stand with cramped knees
and rearrange the wrathful puja—
new beginnings, same old endings
. . . why’d it have to go that way . . .
incense fills my eyes — the smoke,
I stand too close then walk away
in circles clockwise counter
revolution of the wheel of time,
but won’t rewind the scene—
I remember every stitch of it.
. . . why’d it have to happen . . .
for sanctity more than refuge,
standing yet again before the
multicolored rainbowesque
display of wisdom’s power—
I kiss the tail and face of time
and sit beside my piety
. . . why’d these prayers fail your pleas . . .
i strike the drum for new beginnings,
touch my skull to ground and so
begin repentance turning but there’s

blood on the dorje,
tears in the bell.
Mirrored Table Top

Dolls’ eyes roll inside a candy dish,
Curious finger stirs the sweets,
Plucks delights, and one by one
Ruby lips and supple tongue
Make blindness of the joy that was
Never right nor of this world to
Make itself in daylight known
Where players lay their Queens and
Knaves— doubled down and folded.

(previously published in Sex and Murder)

Down at the J and Flying

Something strikes romantic in a truck stop troll
For pussy, dope, the night crawl stroll into that other—
The goin’ in the 2 a.m. hours of the morn.’ Diesel
Pump perfume trails lead me to my hand picked ladies—
Prices never change (forty straight up, sixty half and half),
No internet escorts, craigslist scams – trannies love to mug
You ‘till you learn to love it too. You just pull in slow
Between two trailers, flick the lights off and on and pray:
no dick.
Lucking out, take home twenty minutes worth of woman
Names like Valentine, Afroditey, Joy parade; you try to hold
Your face straight, count your cash beneath the wheel
So she can’t see what you can’t pay — look her over (just a glance)
For new sores, fresh tracks . . . fuck it, ya say to save your eyes—
Pick the dish and pay your bill. Tomorrow — you tell yourself broke
Spun and driving her back —  tomorrow gonna get me some Joy.

(Previously published in Sex and Murder)

Rebel Disorder

shooting
stars

duck
cover
glory
stinks
of
sulfur

black
hole
smokes
and
burns

my
state
of
mind
now
annexed
from
the union

(previously published in Lines Written with a Razor)
Midnight Strokes

Piss-pools fill inside
The eyes of your headstone;
Puddles quickly form around
The soles of my boots and
Disappear into the wanting
Earth. It’s a long one this time—
But I don’t really mind, Honey.
Always were quite the sport:
Happy Anniversary.

(previously published in Sex and Murder)

Words of the Unprofound

These notes are just obscene.
To feel that no one listened
or ever understood your words,
you force them all to read your mind fuck
of grievances threaded with apology.
They’re really all the same—  these swan songs to enlighten
them. These things are not profound.
You said it all without a pen, without
a word spoken
to all who walked into that motel —
Shower stall walls crying red,
strange feelings ‘neath the feet of
those not navigating well the mind
field left before them. Screams.
Yeah, you said it all,
and still you left this note.

What exactly is your deal?
If you’d have said it outright yesterday,
even I would have listened to you.
Or did you want to be a writer,
forever published in tile grout, lacking
what it really doesn’t take to do well, you opt for this—
A captive audience finds this shit so . . . moving,
but only for a while. You were no fucking Dickens,
and your final words will one day be filed under “T.”

If I had to do it . . .
I mean, if I had to write one
just to show you how it’s done
and kill eternity’s time a while
I’d write, “The only thing I’ll miss is beauty.”
But I already do, and so am done.

(previously published in Sex and Murder)
Stripped of Title

Serving time inside this
Vacant hall of cells alone —
Far outside love’s jurisdiction.

Convicted in absentia
For savageries unleashed
Upon the frailty of Mind itself,
All prejudice withheld, unrepentant.
I recount my charges well:

Flayed my tortured nerves exposed
With instruments of terror, battered
Hard with rocks and pipes the brain of matter gray;
It cried and so into it poured my vengeance well,
And with the cold wretched hand of molestation, on
My senses laid until so twisted hid their faces
Shamed into submission’s blank facade of tainted glances.
To all of this I have confessed; in Here —
No echoes for my absolution; none for which I seek.

In Here I rot without
Decay: that promise made from flesh
To men that even through morbidity
Anguish too must take its leave
And putrid blossoms make of us
Whose torments wring our skulls of sweat,
More so than the fears of hell,
Lies of heaven sold in trust.

Limpid so I wander down
This corridor of time, to
Settle firm inside my cell
Erected, raised for these alone,
My sins, nay crimes contained;
Within these coldest walls conceived.

Night falls without notice. Day and dark
Alike withheld. My eyes no longer
Strain, so conditioned to my present state.
I turn the glass to count the hours, watch
The moments pile, one upon the other;
Grains of empty time betray my passing and
I long to touch them, feel the slip,
Know that I am really Here.

Resigned, I pull the blanket of phantasmal
Weave to sleep as I once did before to dream,
But consciousness alone there is. These
Cells will never let it go. I walk these halls
In memory’s chains, chains of time unbroken.

The Press

Yes Sir, how may I help you?

I’m moving and need to cancel my subscription to the Daily Wall.

We do deliver outside of our normal circulation
for a small fee. Where are you moving to?

Do you deliver to Hell?

Yes, but only the editorial, and the funnies on Sunday.

. . . and though the shotgun blast rang straight down the phone line,
was heard for blocks, and made a definite impression on the wall,
he never got to read the headlines.

Bio

Joseph M. Gant is an academically trained scientific glassblower. His writing has appeared in Mandala Magazine, Breadcrumb Scabs, Sex and Murder, The Stray Branch, Ashé, and Ghostlight among others. He lives in the Philadelphia area with his family where he works on his forthcoming collection and blows glass into alien-looking laboratory apparatus. He charges a nickel for answering, “What does a scientific glassblower do,” and is retiring at age 32.