by satnrose

F Street, Washington D.C., Harris & Ewing, 1939

–

TO REINVENT THE WHEEL

jacked mugged and rolled every time I think I just can’t get no lower
I found a bottom below the bottom broke broker brokest but still not
yet broken I must go much farther than before even though I thought
you can’t get no further how bad can it be? Fast Eddie done tole me
“even in defeat you can still lose!” just after her pokered the last dime
of my rent money outta me but guess I deserved that guess I got both
the hole and the shovel keep digging till you get to China but living a
good life is more important than writing a good poem having happy is
better than having rich and so I tried to be righteous but my psychotic
break is mine and mine own and mine alone and I refuse to blame my
parents or my school or my fool but I got on the wrong bus and when
I got off it it took years to figure out where I was and how to get back
and when I did they were all gone and it wasn’t where I was at anywho
so now I’m building my own bus from scratch and I had to reinvent the
wheel to make it work it goes round and round someday I’ll get some-
where if I can just get the juice and the traction if not at least my ashes

–

SAHARA

underneath the Saharan dunes are the ruins of ancient canals and at the
mouth of the Nile the silt goes down a full mile till it hits hard bedrock
the Med was once an inland sea of salt a thousand feet below Gibraltar
until the Gates of Hercules cracked open and the falls cascaded before
the memory of history now the sands are creeping cross the boundaries
water dries up in the well cattle fall on the savannah the plains become
a dusty bowl desolation spreading down the grasslands vultures high in
fiery sky oases filled w/ starving children Atlas mournful watching the
world turned upside down the Maasai drinking blood for dinner thicker
every year & nothing lives to hold the rain even if there was rain as the
Suns go by the dunes drifting ever further southward as they’ve done a
little more each day for 10000 years everything turns to dust eventually

–

A DANCE OF SILHOUETTES

she took flight the first chance she could get free as she ran down the
street and turned into the night evaporating while the Harleys revved
up the police were out chasing phantoms the state of the glass opened
and forgotten all ears hearing the shouting and the riots but it was all
calculated for the maximum effect it was a ruse for the truly innocent
and in any case it was a dance of silhouettes finally fading to full white

–

satnrose is a well-known antiquarian bookseller, and formerly a not-so-secret messenger in the innermost depths of Capitol Hill and K Street. He has been published in a number of literary magazines, but since his reincarnation as “satnrose” last year, he has been published in Evergreen Review, Iconoclast, Danse Macabre, Counterexample Poetics, wtf.pwm, Oysters & Chocolate, Apparatus, Gloom Cupboard, Escape into Life, Bring the Ink, Shoots and Vines, Eskimo Pie, Bare Back, Literary Tonic, Clean Sheets, Mad Swirl, Litsnack, Metazen, The November 3rd Club, Stray Branch, The Citron Review, Mastodon Dentist, Full of Crow, Nefarious Ballerina, etc.