Heaviest Night

Poetry by Heath Brougher ∞ Photos by Ton-E Watson

Tawdry houses

drench by the sidewalk,

our liquid egg fry

forever; golden husk,

this summer is full of sweat—

came humid, unexpected,

from cooler places;

now we drive [cops everywhere]

windows down, drunk in the day,

still pouring that saltine liquid

from our faces; even night

breeds dense panting [no respite]

among this house made of thick

Summer air.

The Dust of Drowned Decades

No beauty, no confession of beauty,

just meaningless words sprayed

at me by the populace “out there”

reality spinning off the hinge; I don’t buy

these fake pictures of lying eyes;

spiderbitten brain crazes on eternally

in the vulnerable confused speechlessness;

I’m thirty-five years old and Burroughs was right

in his last breath, his last words:

“there is no final enough of wisdom”;

for me just the halfawake halfconfusion

as the brain twirls in the elsewheres of the spaces of the Universe;

time: it flows—           we name its years,

divide them up, chopped days and weeks

by humans’ simultaneous agreement

to settle on this particular perception of reality;

agreeing to see the fence as the fence,

the coin as the coin,

and wave goodbye to their decade;

and my brain spins in space and no beauty in their clear cold world—

I usually being half here, half in the Thought garden.

Sourly Slung    

Something just ran palpable

from a ruffled Springtime; dark windy cold

has enclosed the Bloom; and where do we go from here?—

doubtlessly sobs will ring, sorrowed pangs

felt thick everywhere there was a wish for redemption, another try; but No,

this Spring has been a stillborn;

no vegetables reared; not a petal turned florid;

only regret of wearing such light clothes, basking

so soon in these evanescent trifles of friendly Day—

that Emptiness, that Nothingness, will reclaim its stranglehold,

sprouting its wicked meagers.