ABYSS BLINKED
ABYSS BLINKED
Greg Meyer
Cthulhu Wept
2016
Copyright ? 2016 by Greg Meyer
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.
ISBN: 978-1539071549
First Printing: 2016
Contact:
[email protected] To my family and friends.
Thank you for making life worth living.
"I am fond of them, of the inferior beings of the abyss,
of those who are full of longing."
Richard Wagner
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
PREFACE
FULL DISCLOSURE
ABYSS BLINKED
SHOULDN'T STOW THRONES
YEATS FOR THE MODERN DAY
MORBID SAINT
THE JUDGMENT OF HORUS
APOCALYPTICA
A POEM FOR THE SOUTH
SOCIAL JUSTICE COUCH POTATO
2,37,8-TETRACHLORODIBENZODIOXIN
LUCIFER FRACTALIS
JUDAS-PRICE
FOR THE ABSENT
EPHEMERA
MEMORIA
INSOMNIA
ON SEEING TWO LOVERS
THREE HAIKU ON A RAINY DRIVE HOME
REVEILLE
BOX-ELDER BEETLES
FOUR HAIKU FOR DESOLATION
WINTER'S TITHE
REVIVE THE PATRONAGE SYSTEM
I MEANT WHAT I SAID ABOUT PIG FARMS
PORCINE JACOB MARLEY
ARS POETICA CYNICA
THERE IS A TEST BUT I DON'T HAVE A STUDY GUIDE
YOU FAILED THE TEST
A PREDICTION
THE COSMIC OCEAN
SCIENTIFIC PROCESS
CARLY SIMON REMIX
DISSIPATE
BASED ON A TRUE STORY
SONG OF STORMS
ONLY AFTER IT'S GONE
STAGNATION
I CANNOT FORGET
A GOOD REASON TO STAY
TRIPARTATE
ANTAGONISTIC
LIQUID FORTITUDE
LATE AUGUST
THE GREATEST PICTURE IN THE WORLD
THE THESIS OF MY LIFE
FUN TO JUMP INTO, THOUGH
ALSO I TASTE KIND OF AWFUL
DRAWN BY THE AIRSTREAM
FOR SARAMAGO
BUCKET LIST
MEGA-BLOX
IF I GOT A TATTOO
I'LL SHARE WITH THE COSMONAUTS
TINDERBOX
LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT
BFFs
GUIDE TO BEING A HIPSTER LIKE ME
DOWN THE HIGHWAY, NOT ACROSS THE STREET
RESPONDING TO EMILY D.
SECRET INGREDIENT
SIGN OF DISDAIN
SUDDEN-ONSET FEAR OF MORTALITY
SOME MORNINGS
A SURE SIGN OF MATURITY
BEST READ IN A HEATH LEDGER VOICE
COMBAT VETERAN
PLAYING COPS AND ROBBERS
FUTURE SIGHT
THE GOOD NEWS
ESPECIALLY FOR TEACHERS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I owe thanks to a lot of people. In particular, Carla DeWit, Tyler Magruder, and Lee Joseph Fulton, who very kindly helped proof this work. In general, every one of my family and friends who've been there along the way. I'm still here because of you.
Thank you all so much.
Greg Meyer
August, 2016
PREFACE
A man named Emil Ciron once said "A book is a suicide postponed." He's not wrong. This book you are holding (or collection of pixels you are viewing) would not exist if, one summer day six years ago, I had not failed to kill myself rather spectacularly. I was laughably incompetent at the simple act of self-annihilation. Picture Mr. Bean sticking his head in an oven only to find the oven is electric, but with a dorky teenager. Yeah. About like that.
Obviously, I survived and got help. But I never dealt with the repressed memories of that time. It's a bad habit I have of bottling up emotions, putting those bottles in a safe, and then dropping that safe in the Marianas Trench. Tends to bubble up in ugly ways. Writing about those emotions helps.
So last summer, I decided to write a poem (or more) a day for a month. Whatever I felt like talking about. The end result was nearly 300 poems. Most of them were terrible. The remainder (plus some others) are in the following pages, and they fall into three categories:
Observational poems about nature and society.
Pseudo-romantic poems.
Autobiographical poems.
"Congratulations, Greg," you're saying. "You wrote poems in three of the most common archetypes poets have available to them." Well yeah. Duh. The whole process was cathartic, though. And honestly, my goals were threefold. Make poems that made me feel better. Make funny, stupid, or insightful poems. String words together in pretty ways. Overall, I think I succeeded.
That said, I feel I should throw a few disclaimers out there. First, if you haven't guessed, some of these poems deal with suicide. Second, if you know me personally, you might think you recognize someone in these poems. Maybe even yourself. No. You're wrong. These poems are fiction. Except for the bits that aren't. Finally, some of the pseudo-romantic poems are a bit "nice guyish." I know it. I wrote the bloody things. They make good poems, but nothing more, and I've done my best not to live or think like the voices in those poems.
Anyway-Enjoy!
FULL DISCLOSURE
Poets lie.
We twist the world
To fit our verse.
ABYSS BLINKED
Humanity's stared into the abyss for millennia,
A cosmic game of chicken.
Just now, the abyss blinked.
SHOULDN'T STOW THRONES
We've been caged in glass houses
By power-mad voyeurs.
Start throwing stones.
YEATS FOR THE MODERN DAY
Turning and turning
In the widening gyre,
The falcon hears
The falconer just fine.
MORBID SAINT
The morbid saint won't let us forget
Our martyrs and the bloodprice they paid.
An iron grudge it has,
Forged from shrill 24/7 news footage
And shaped by knee-jerk panic laws
Into a monolith to paranoia,
A farcical production of security theater,
A landmine in the path of a nation.
THE JUDGMENT OF HORUS
The roving eye of Horus
Burns above your crystal tower.
Oh peacock of moral bankruptcy,
The wadjet eye has marked you.
Though you lord it over the kine,
Though your name is on lips
From Lebanon to London,
Horus the Hawk will not spare you.
Your bright plumage and shrill demagoguery are naught
To the feather weighed against your soul.
APOCALYPTICA
The end is nigh!
Rapture! New World Order!
Apocalypse now!
Moloch!
Ragnarok!
Y3K dread!
Avian mad cow disease found in pork!
Skynet approaches singularity!
Mayan calendar runs out again!
Yellowstone eruption!
Poisoned water!
Mushroom clouds approach!
Stay indoors!
>
Hoard gold bricks!
Stockpile ammunition!
Radiation!
Tribulation!
Jackbooted thugs of 666!
Microchips!
Burn books!
Ignorance is bliss!
God hates fags!
Sharia law!
Media furor over generic celebrity scandal of the day!
Antichrist weds Babylonian Whore!
Homosexual Jewish Child Pornographers in YOUR neighborhood!
Shocking news involving the current racial scapegoat!
Godless Commie Fascist Socialists!
Entanglement in hopeless war!
Foreign oil shackles!
White culture at risk! Remember the 14 words!
9/11 an inside job!
Government doublespeak! Collateral damage!
Satanic backmasked messages!
Cthulhu for president!
The end is nigh!
A POEM FOR THE SOUTH
Sherman stopped too soon.
SOCIAL JUSTICE COUCH POTATO
I write about social ills
With a mouth full of pop-tart
And no pants on.
2,3,7,8-TETRACHLORODIBENZODIOXIN
At the bar,
The Vietnam vet
Told me of buddies
Who didn't make it.
Shot.
Stabbed.
Captured.
Vanished.
At home, they spat on him,
Yelled "baby-killer," "murderer," "rapist."
He wasn't.
Although others were.
He doesn't deny that.
He burnt his uniform,
His memories, his tongue,
And never spoke
Of what he'd seen or done.
Not even to his wife.
He stayed sane
Surrounded by atrocity
While others became demons
In a manufactured Hell
For the benefit of democracy
And the Vietnamese,
Who were inexplicably ungrateful for Apocalypse Now.
And I went home
And lay in my dark bedroom
Thinking of one uncle
Who got lucky:
He served on an airbase.
Planes took off
Over his head
Loaded with Agent Orange and its little
2,3,7,8-Tetrachlorodibenzodioxin,
While down below another uncle endured the Tet Offensive
And the poison spray of defoliant.
Even today,
The ground roils with toxin
And babies are born without
Legs
Eyes
Lungs
Hearts
Brains
Life.
And men
Like my "lucky" uncle
Have cancers
And men
Like my other uncle,
Scream at night
Thanks to that little
2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzodioxin,
A manufacturing impurity
Dealing death.
Soldiers are still missing,
Categorized as
AWOL
MIA
KIA.
Their families will never know.
Their bones will never go home.
Monuments to massacres
Scar villages everywhere you go.
Memories of rapes, misdirected airstrikes,
Scared young men unleashing deadly frustration
On civilians.
Bones of both sides out in the maps' light green-
In the jungle
In the rice paddies
In the earth-
Mouldering next to 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzodioxin.
LUCIFER FRACTALIS
Lucifer fell
And entering Earth's atmosphere,
Broke into ten trillion shards
Which lodged in human hearts.
JUDAS-PRICE
Words are the currency of cruelty.
For thirty seconds of laughter,
I'd turn a scalpel tongue
Against my dearest friend.
FOR THE ABSENT
A single word out of the entire dictionary of our lives
Is all our friendship was.
Yet it was the most significant word of all:
Peace.
EPHEMERA
Interior peace is a light
Ghost-glowing
In the rain-haze of evening.
MEMORIA
Uncut grass swirling in the wind;
Old photos fading in a Tupperware prison;
A leather belt curved and warped from years of use;
Dust caked on fan blades that never stop spinning;
A box of aging letters;
Stains on a white wall where something stood for years;
An empty pill bottle discarded in a corner.
INSOMNIA
The night-light moon
Hangs low and dull,
a cloud-wreathed communion wafer.
Three birds fly across-
Maiden, Mother, Crone.
I stare out the window.
ON SEEING TWO LOVERS
Like golden pollen,
Your love for him
Hangs in the air.
THREE HAIKU ON A RAINY DRIVE HOME
As chain lightning strikes,
Frogs hop across the highway-
One hits my bumper.
Flashbang detonates-
Dull lightning strikes low and close.
A fuse box explodes.
Shallow rain puddles
Gold-glowing in the sunset-
Thin fog drifts across.
REVEILLE
Sunset's gun
Blows apart each failing day,
Shredding the hours
Into scraps of purple cloud.
I sit on the gas tank
Watching my life slip past.
BOX-ELDER BEETLES
Ochre and black,
They crawl on dirty glass.
Crush for stench.
FOUR HAIKU FOR DESOLATION
Sulfur cordite smoke;
Blood spatters fallen oak leaves-
The season of death.
Three scrawny old crows
On a willow tree bent by
Bleak midwinter wind.
A roadkill squirrel,
Fur blowing loosely tufted-
Poor guy wanted nuts.
The lowly maggot
Devours all those who desire
To enter Heaven.
WINTER'S TITHE
Gut the deer,
Bleed it dry.
The children laugh
At its lolling tongue.
Shiver as the life steams out.
REVIVE THE PATRONAGE SYSTEM
You want picturesque imagery?
Pay for me to live in Ireland.
Until then I'm writing about abandoned pig farms.
I MEANT WHAT I SAID ABOUT PIG FARMS
Out at the abandoned hog farm
We'd sit watching sunsets
Shift from nectar into blood.
PORCINE JACOB MARLEY
Oink. Oink. Squee.
The ghosts of breakfasts past
Keep interrupting
Our makeout.
ARS POETICA
Poetry is a joke.
Just separate
Your
Sentences
Into
Lines
Like
This,
Mayberemovepunctuation,
Come up with an image or two
Like diamonds in a slop trough,
And if it happens to rhyme?
That's hardly a crime.
THERE IS A TEST BUT I DON'T HAVE A STUDY GUIDE
Life,
The Universe, Everything-
The answers aren't here,
You gormless sad-sack!
Get a job, have some kids,
Hate your spouse, die bitter,
Lather rinse repeat.
That's the meaning of life.
And this poem lies.
YOU FAILED THE TEST
We established that, right?
That poems lie?
Weren't you paying attention,
You utter failure?
Why do I even try?
A PREDICTION
Jarring tonal shifts,
Ars poetica,
Failed romance,
And depression.
New York Times best-seller.
Guaranteed.
THE COSMIC OCEAN
The skein of fate stretches thin beneath us;
Our universe unravels into specks of kaleidoscopic light.
Soon all will tumble into the formless void
Which laps at the feet of God.
SCIENTIFIC PROCESS
Formulate the universe;
Drain all mystery and romance from existence;
Reduce our lives to equations, chemical processes, blind instinct;
Peer-review;
Publish;
Perish.
CARLY SIMON REMIX
You're so vain
You'll probably think these poems are about you.
Well, they are.
Shh.
No one will believe you.
You're a horrible narcissist, after all.
DISSIPATE
Affection is the light mist
Rising from hot asphalt
After a summer rain.
BASED ON A TRUE STORY
Our love is a barn swallow
Flattened on a rural highway
While I flutter nearby,
Deluding myself.
SONG OF STORMS
Daystar rides low and pendulous
As the blue-black sky presses down.
Across the dark prairie you wander.
I call you, daughter of Asphodel-
Walk with me on this night of storms.
By morning all will be forgotten
Except a vanishing ozone haze
And the careless brush
Of your hand on mine.
ONLY AFTER IT'S GONE
A constant wind on open prairie ceases;
Your perfume has become familiar,
Unnoticeable among other mundane scents.
No kindly bird guards our love;
Carrion-hawks have picked our affections clean.
The voyages of the moon coil eternally,
Yet on Earth we shear apart in scant years.
Swans mate once and never love again:
Were we swans, or merely passing time?
A wind on open prairie's ceased,
All my sorrow has increased.
STAGNATION
Our love has become a fecund pond.
Glass-smooth pure water
Contaminated with crimson algae,
Choked with milfoil.
No breath from my lungs
Can disturb the eerie calm
Of those silent waters.
I CANNOT FORGET
Your breath came with a fit and start,
A rattle and a catch.
Underneath my clumsy touch
I felt your trembling heart.
The moment lasted a thousand years,
I leaned and kissed your hair.
You moved on, denying
All that happened there,
The words I said, and even meant.
You insist I never spoke.
But I remember everything-
I remember everything.
A GOOD REASON TO STAY
You stink of beer and broken promises,
Of cigarettes and cheap cologne.
I know I should move on from you,
But I'm afraid to be alone.
TRI