Readings for a year's end: "better luck next year!?"

 "Stutter"
(Nick Barrows)

Sonic with gargled suitor
the concentration stutter steps
alligatored heap upon the dessicated
bastards' aqualung that catches particles
of one distress to the next dire deads of winter
These dirty flower corpses point down to
offer mere judgments, smug-less and holy diving
as if to say "better luck next year!?"
More and more the concrete crumbles as the world
finds a way to ease its way into the souls of us
We pander to the slick of passive
still more humbles sway into the ache of our exits
luring bubbled visions of pipe smoked riches
and Fannie Mae fortunes as we crawl around the distressed porch
picking out the stammer of imperfect and locomotives
The eagerness of '90s psyche pours on like 
reched dopamine secreting its gruesome rewards
Rewards feed for more rewards 
More rewards
More rewards
Seeking and seeking until those waterbeds don't exist anymore
just funny bloated words that sour salty in your nostrils
Lagging useless on your tongue
Melanoma
SCUBA
Carnal
Horse-kicking the urge to tremor or sit content
on the rigidity would be admission of the ideopathic
between the event horizon and childhood concussions
These innards of wires pulled backs and jumbled sideshows
are a ticking timebomb that began in mills of Kentucky 
The saloons of Cincinnati
Broken noses and bad teeth now honor us as the gutters tilt
and fill with more things that crash uncertainty
The images standing like a gaunt caretaker
to be seven feet tall with lumberjack crazy
and tin-foil wrapped around a spark plug
crashing through streams
eating up snowing mountains
surviving on sunlight and burnt wood
To gallop madness and breeze unworried
Being the intro
the tagline
a last phase
unponder that you're going to be the hero of this ridiculous fair

 

"Stutter" by Nick Barrows appears in  the collection Versus (Aurore Press, 2012) which also features poems by Mark Flanigan. Both poets are from Cincinnati and will be appearing tonight at a hometown performance of poems from Versus at The Comet Bar.  Barrows' other works have appeared in Forklift, Ohio: A Journal of Poetry, Cooking, & Light Industrial Safety, Trained Monkey Press, and Semantikon.  He was also the music editor for The Citizen. His musical endeavors include The 4 Track All-Stars and Jack Burton Overdrive. In 2007 he released his first chapbook, Rocket on Bibles, available both as a paperback and audiobook at Lulu. His blog is NBBoom.