& then I inhaled a lungful of sweet-cream when

Your left hand’s sandpaper tongue
Woke me curiously
From a dream
Where I did odd things
Like still-sitting behind a desk
In a bright room
[Like our Court of Moral Questioning]
In front of a man
With hair missing leaning
Over a dust-grey book pressing
His wrinkled finger against the middle split-
Open reciting lines blurred to me
To others listening surrounding me Darling

They were like nothing we have ever seen

I watched
As they were quick
Scribbling
Down
The sounds coming
Out of his mouth

An alarm-bell rang
The others dissolved
Before me
The mumbling man hunched
Over his desk waving
Me out from the room crying

- Zachary C. Bush
As Published in Barfing Frog Press: September 2007

[[[into this space]]]

I am slipping away_______

where shadows run backwards
screaming FIRE

that invisible light

where moths suffocate
& shrivel by the thousands

at my feet

- Zachary C. Bush

before their grand Ascension

This is the hour when
The heavens birth a full
Moon to share Sky with Sun
When 3 children rise
From the town’s sewer caps
Like lit candlesticks

They can sense dusk
From within their canals of shit

Now drawn to a new scent
The decaying of stranger-S-bodies
Wrapped in black polyurethane
Scattered across this dust-bowl park
Body bags beneath angelic-white
Dogwood branches that wave like hands

It is spring and the winds are calling

The children have brought their supplies
Some bundles of string and cafeteria knives
They haven’t forgotten how to have fun
After all what would children be if they did not play?

They move closer
Surrounding the bodies
The children carve black diamonds
Out of the bags
And poke small holes around the ends
Securing the holes with string

And as the winds whip about them
The children laugh and laugh
How they love flying kites at dusk

- Zachary C. Bush