By: James Redfern
Toy piano plays insane,
trying to catch up
with harpsichord,
and a skull bends back
on the tip of a spine
laughing with dead
silver teeth.
Children kill and die and fuck
before morning recess,
and the volume is turned up
another notch.
Everybody screams
and the Ice Cream Man
remains in the kitchen,
rolling big cigars.
Who among you
can hear the toy piano,
feel the skull,
or see the children?
—Shut up!
The castle is empty
and you
are all things,
—if, that is, if
you can carry the
weight.
And, by now,
the wine is spilt,
and the sands are
still ticking.
Who among you
can see any of this?
Who among you
knows the equation
of the dead?
Who among you
can hear the rapturous chords
of the marrows
of evermore?
Who among you
has tasted the thirst
of forced psychosis?
Who among you
knows the way to
the source of the river?
Who among you
can proudly wear
the riparian mud
on your eyes
and lips
and nipples?
Who among you
has read the translations
of unspoken and secret
knowledge as displayed
on the thresholds
of severed hells?
Who among you
knows how to draw
blood into a rig,
or the conjugation
of the verb to god?
Who among you
knows of the mystical gland,
or the sound of
the universe breathing?
Who among you
even knows
the way to Chicago
in a car
without a map?
James Redfern was born and raised in Long Beach, California. Redfern is a graduate of Grinnell College. His work has been published by The American Journal of Poetry, Transcend, Verity La: The Clozapine Clinic, Dime Show Review, Swimming with Elephants, Montana Mouthful, Anti-Heroin Chic, Great Lakes Poetry Press, Fear and Loathing in Long Beach, Passengers Journal, DoveTales, We Are Antifa (anthology, Into the Void), High Shelf, and elsewhere.