Month: March 2024

• Lust Light, Dust Mite

  

  When in the back of your mind you know you are dying

  and you try to push it away … because you are still young

  every breath at night is an elaborate excuse, every morning you arise is a triumph, of some sort

  and daddy is broken

  I feed him pills and artificial limbs

  I am broken God

  yet you piss holy water into my eyes

  you know I hate you

  yet I tremble at the spires

  I am licorice lust

  Man, how they dripped so innocent today

  in that carnival van … it all smelled so sweet, percolating plastic dolls and candy bars

  rumble on, ramble on, to Vegas for a good trip

  where we will smoke Heaven’s lost luggage

  and cough up spirits of unbridled lust

  break my bones against the sandstone

  buy me MuckaLucks baby

  so I can stand the desert sweat and lust

  mobile home whores

  rusting in the dust

  a fair kiss is well enough

  I have shit scattered everywhere

  Like life bleeding out on an Atlas

  muscle roads French kissing barbaric wounds

  from the road, from the tender cradle, from the broken grave

  I am flying through space

  on a comet boiled in a broken heart.

  

  By

  Aaron Echoes August

• The Translucent Wander Pain

  

  Looking through her red box

  On a stormy, sunny day

  A cold room full of hot heart

  It was a different time

  In a faraway place

  Found out all about

  the only unforgivable thing she did again

  Had to fly away from the bad news

  Park my ride and drink away the hard bruise

  And the record just kept on spinning in my head

  The same song playing into the dead

  Of night

  As the airplanes roared overhead

  And the traffic snaked all around

  And the lights popping off like a multitude of aneurysms

  Some mad security guard come tapping on my glass

  I had no cold fire to offer the air

  Up there

  She’ll never know the stories of my diversions

  A belly full of rot

  As I stumbled through the throngs of mad Christmas cheer

  Alone, depraved,

  Stark raving mad

  A sea rope noose at the ready in my attaché

  Mumbling in the cold

  Whilst the rich and the loved

  Relish in the vibe of their misguided, pompous, materialistic
  ways

  I froze to death

  A thousand times

  In a world not of my own dream

  But isn’t that just me anyway?

  Like a tarnished and unpolished lamp

  They preach the Word

  As they stir my scars

  Love to lay the blame

  As they lay down in drug-induced sin

  To live this long

  And to hold so little

  Sans the breadth of memories

  Too broken to carry along

  To my little downtown room

  The lone light above this broken desk

  A hot plate and some food

  A fire escape and the moon

  A place to sit tonight.

  

  By

  Aaron Echoes August

• Planet Sans Soul

  

  The aeroplanes are carving slits through the night sky

  Blinking jewels of genitalia roar toward somewhere else

  I look up at Orion; home

  Still my feet planted firmly on Planet War

  Planet Corruption

  Planet Destruction

  Planet Malnutrition

  Planet Delusion

  Planet Holy Hate

  little green men licking human lollipops

  pluck polluted dandelions

  then dash away

  for what amount of hope

  lies with beings such as these?

  

  By

  Aaron Echoes August

• Light Night

  

  She is like the light

  the blue light, that crops life

  into some picture-perfect kiss and heart

  wandering I go,

  clouds and echoes

  they pour down and talk about love

  in every sun-drenched step

  she smiles

  and says it’s all right

  and even when I look out into loneliness

  as the sun drops and the stars spit

  she breathes and wanders

  in her own head

  in my own heart

  the dying of the light

  I catch her like a kite

  loose and torn

  my shoulder against the frame of night

  cold, gray, sun blessed

  love blessed

  a Dixie pout in Heaven

  the road worn and all that

  and it’s human on human

  it’s beauty unknown

  exploding like some summer blush

  a street, a lane, a river that boils

  I hand her a flower

  broken but beautiful

  in my gray night

  where I troll and dream

  love light just written in a book

  this heart arcing, exploding

  some stranger’s tears running down

  across the space between us

  and I can taste her

  across a world

  across a distance

  and I hold her in the space

  the division runs asunder

  yet I know her

  completely, dreamy, love like the sun

  love some magic burn

  tattooed like fire and light

  a kiss to melt my endless mountains.

  

  By

  Aaron Echoes August

• The Druid Dream Urinal Ship

  

  The baby nearly crawled off the airport food court table because we were too busy arguing. I threw down a wrinkled five-dollar bill and told her to just leave. I had a flight to Tulsa to catch and I was beginning to panic about being late, but she just wouldn’t stop with the gnawing upon my wooden soul. I called her a beaver and that pissed her off even more.

  I snatched some pieces of paper from her hands. They were pages from my Book of Life, now partly crumpled due to her angry grip. I needed to use the restroom and walked off. I turned back to look at her from a distance. She boldly stood out from all the other people there. She was as red as a lobster and there was a ghostly white mist swirling above her head.    

  I came upon a half-open door labeled MENOS. I stepped inside and it was a bathroom but also a bawdy place for leather-clad rebel rousers. I stood in line at the urinals and glanced over at the crowded billiards table. There was smoke and drink and loud talk in the air. There was a woman sprawled out on the orange velvet and she swam among all the colorful balls. Someone looked at me and whispered to a friend: “These perverts come in here to watch.”

  I began to get nervous as I continued to wait to just use the urinal. Someone tapped on my shoulder, and I turned to look at a large man dressed in pearl white long johns. He looked like Bull from the television show Night Court. He went on to inform me that this restroom was only for “fighting men” and that I had to leave. I was horribly embarrassed but angry as well. I was still fuming from the fight with the wife that had been going on all day long. “Well, then where the hell is a restroom that I can use!?” I barked. Bull grasped me by the shoulder and shoved me out into a crystal hallway, sterile and cold, black trapezoidal chandeliers dangling in nothingness.

  The next thing I knew, I was in downtown Tulsa leaning against a car and looking over a paper map. For some reason I was smoking a pipe. I looked up at the alabaster sky streaked with a purple bruise and saw a spaceship. It hummed methodically. It was circular in shape, as if a jumbo jet had been twisted into a cream cheese and cherry kolache. It was colored cranberry and aluminum. It was flying so low that I just knew that at any moment there would be a terrible crash and explosion. It never happened. I guess it landed at the airport and I was just crazy.

  I found a Howard Johnson’s hotel and resort and checked in forever. I sat on the edge of the bed in room 413 and looked out the large window at the hostile skyline of the world. I studied all the hard edges of architecture and bemoaned the endless seas of broken hearts. The room was quiet until the window unit A/C kicked in. I lay back on the bed and there she suddenly was beside me. My wife. Sleeping soundly. The baby must have gone to Heaven. The anger must have dissipated as well. I don’t know. I never know. An end of day darkness began to swallow the room. I gripped a pillow and tried to sleep my way into another dream.

  END

  

  By

  Aaron Echoes August