Diorama Melodrama
They say Charles Atlas
ain’t got nothing on me
or is it that I’m nothing
like Charles Atlas.
As a shortsighted pupil
I addle these items
more than the labyrinthine
rules of English grammar.
Looking for a guiding
light after not finding
the coupon in the comic
book, I went to a blind
auction where I spent
my life earnings to buy
a mirror reputedly
owned by Oscar Wilde.
Unwrapped it at home
expecting to see
a face and physique
macho enough to repel
any sandstorm on
the beach but the damn
thing cracked, spraying
the room with rainbows.
The hazy purple
ambiance of a Pink Floyd
light show sucking me off
into another dimension
of space and time
where I’m walking
twisted arm in twisted
arm with Syd Barrett.
Lugging pieces of mind
while seeking a wizard
beyond the Mecca
of meth and her valley
of death for the most
hallowed of hallucinogens,
orgasmic and tailor made
for a bolder brand of sanity.
Drain
Cupid’s drunk
in the shadows
of a sanguine moon
but he still got game.
Piercing arrow letting
poetry gush from pen,
like blood from a femoral
artery, a Shakespearean
crime scene of passion
with plasma pulsing with
four letter word themes
from fear of loss,
to how your sexy
apex of love and lust
bust into the very best
fuck ever made me come.
As if your vowels a scenic
bridge built on salvation,
not edge of seat suspension,
to get my cliche of consonants
to go from a lost continent
of dearth to one of rebirth.
But magic fleeting, as a lyric
written in red ink and forgotten,
leaving only a ghost of melody
with five letter word themes left
to spin in my head, like my last
pair of worn and torn Calvin Kleins
drowning in the suds of a Maytag
washing machine, trying to distract
myself from the way we once
were with the wordle of the day.
Pounds
The sunlight of thousands
of days once born so bright,
seen only secondhand through
the cubicle’s cracked window
facing a circle of dead cypress
trees surrounding a pair of rusted
dumpsters and a rotted wood
picnic table deep in pigeon shit.
The room awash in a fluorescent
glare where a tense spine wobbles
in a threadbare swivel chair.
By the middle of a numbing
afternoon, the creaking pain
in the ass and other pressure
points ramp up in sheer volume
like the weight of a cut of bloody
roast beef increased by a greedy
butcher’s fat thumb on the scale.
Tony Pena is the former 2017-2018 Poet Laureate for the city of Beacon, New York.
His prose and poetry have found refuge recently with Dear Booze, Death Wish Poetry, Fevers of the Mind, The Literary Underground, Trailer Park Quarterly, and Witcraft. Also, Best of the Net nominations in 2019 from the Rye Whiskey Review and the Dope Fiend Daily.
A volume of poetry and flash fiction, Blood and Beats and Rock n Roll, is available at Amazon.
A chapbook of poetry, Opening night in Gehenna, is available from author.
Social Media: