Stephanie Smith

Trio

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These Psychotic Walls

 

I feel lost in fever dreams

of Mozart and Shakespeare,

parades of cannibals and faerie queens

mingling in the murky shadows of my

mind’s museum of the strange and psychotic,

where every wall is a gruesome display

of a bludgeoned past

It is not even poetry that spews

from these lips. It is not even life

but certain death

 

Portrait of a Young Man Awakening

 

He was afraid of girls when he was young

and springtime birds with bloody beaks

basking aglow in the city streets

Grunge sounds spewing from cracked car windows

The Devil Himself shooting heroin

in an alleyway overlooking the Gates of Heaven

 

He questioned the actions of priests in those days

who smoked cigarettes with nonchalance on the church steps,

who bent virgins over on skinned knees,

awakening a world beyond winter’s freeze

to free the young from the cold clutch of purgatory

and lie there in the shattered stained-glass shards

that dig into human flesh

 

He was sure he wouldn’t make it past twenty

He dreamt often of a tombstone engraved in his name

Plain but for a milky-white phallus

slung limp over the branch of a tree

He screamed sacrilege into the ears of the dead

as the bright stars of night hovered over his head

and he awoke in the present womb of his wedding bed

with his wife and a newfound fear of failing

 

These Heavenly Streets

 

Angels are on the streets

begging for change

beneath the canopy of a hanging corpse

 

You drop a dime

into the palm of a heavenly body

whose right breast has been

devoured by a wild animal

A casualty of war, you think

These streets are rough

And unfrocked priests

believe in nothing

but the disembodied

     voice of God

 

These are the days when

families fall to their knees

with gunshot wounds

and diseases plague the dreams of scholars

whose brains will be preserved for the greater good

 

The body of Christ is spread-eagled

     on the ground

beside a broken whiskey jar

The graveyards are vacant

Dead men roam dead-end roads

searching for a place to pray

Ready to receive the Eucharist

To feel flesh on their tongues again

 

But the churches have burned

on these heavenly streets

Structures cannot hold

Congregations seek coverage elsewhere

For voices carry

across an eviscerated sky

about the coming of the Lord

Little do we know

the Messiah hides

amongst you and I

sharpening His sword

 

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Stephanie Smith is a poet and writer from Scranton, Pennsylvania. Her work has appeared in DM, Pif Magazine, Red River Review, Strong Verse, Forge Journal, Morpheus Tales, and Gloom Cupboard. Her first poetry chapbook, Dreams of Dali, is available from Flutter Press.

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