Abyss Blinked Read online

  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