by normal
“—this is the new anti fascist war—
we must fight against the rule of the corpses—”
—amiri baraka, what’s that who is this in them old nazi cloths?

today, the mother of scorpions devours her own
grashopper mice eat their cousins
migrating crane are laying plutonium eggs all over the
baltic sea

& another pubescent freedom fighter accidentally kills a sage
& another bohemoth flood water swallows the gulf coast
& another goliath chemical consortium swallows the sea
& another matouke mushroom is gulped down as a delicacy.

today, the smog charges over the sky
the smog wears the face of ganghis khan
& every continuing generation practices its’ own poly-
technical form of kamikaze

tired generals wage war with tired generals
another tongue loses it’s language
another chicano lad is thrown into the tarpits
a gamma ray bursts
a thimbleweed shrivels
weapons drive men psychotic
& nothing is always the same as nothing.

in the common wind, common ephemera cohere
in the common atom, rigormortis speaks with futuristic eyes
it is hitler & assad fornicating a rose
it is an apiary of lost worlds
a mausoleum afterlife of lunatic brains
a carnival sky filled with crematorium ash

& dying trees are weeping
& long-gone leaves are falling
old ships in the harbor with dead grecian nymphs
with new skies heavy with the karma of hara-kiri missiles
& street strangers approach with bare beggar bowls
& life jerks itself off in its own cosmic sheets.

today, epiphanies stalk time with rusted hatchets while
god sits alone before his audience of 100 billion solar systems
writing his scripture of blackholes, quarks & solar wind
& because god watches over epiphany & apocalypse equally—

today, history will not be heeded
today, a nation of blind robots will follow the rant & piffle
of a mad man over the cliff & into oblivion
today, the mother of scorpions devours her own.

by normal
“screw nice & its pretty flowers.”
—vladimir mayakovski, a cloud in trousers

the shade goes down
night falls
life begins on the side of melancholy
the shade goes up
i am putting flowers in a vase
i am cleaning up this foul world with my thoughts
i am thinking of the insect world
stink bugs, dung beetles, thrips, brush crickets, boxelders, skullmaggots
the shade goes down
cranial engine room—2 brain cells & a big mouth
dream of stopping wars & taming kittens
the shade goes up
i am brewing tea in a coffee cup
sun comes out
light scrubs the earth
a dead man rises, a child falls, a malignancy thrives
both saint & tyrant wiggle equally in the womb
blossoms dump their shadows on the floor
shade down
carpet slippers pace an ancient pattern that remains unrepeated twice
the shade goes up
i am oiling my old feet with new age salve
a single cloud tips a cup of water
a rainbow raises its arch like a cat stretching its back
a great wind blows
a grandmother bakes her bread
the shade stays up
somebody wiggles in the womb
somebody invents a murderous missile
2 sweethearts make love in the afternoon fresco
somebody shoots a south china tiger
a baby cries
a blue jay tweedle dees
the shade goes down
the eye of an incredible force blinks
beyond death, the
the sky lives on

december 2022

by Adam Cornford

Black square central plaza of the capital of Night shadowed by street anti-lamps

Black square unfolding into a cube of silence that unfolds into Nothing’s tesseract

Black square door into maximum entropy where even the grains of light are frozen

Black square surrounded by black squares on all sides of Death’s unbounded chessboard

Black square Robert Fludd’s angel-mirror showing infinite dark in four directions

Black square vast macroscope slide a vertical slice through the hells of all religions

Black square moonless night-window Black square rejection of promised heaven

Black square quadrant in a map of colonial ignorance laid over prismatic poetries

Black square pirate flag where a snapdragon skull will flower laughing at nationality

Black square doubled becomes lenses for glasses that reveal only the Unseeable

Black square emblem of the dispossessed flapping above their captured arsenal

for John Yau

by Adam Cornford

es una gran avispa primitiva
abuela de hormigas demoníacas
y de serafines artesanos de miel 
ella que se arrastra y se inclina
delicadamente como bailarina
sobre las hiperesferas concéntricas
y cristalinas de la realidad

con ojos compuestos de lo posible

y cuerpo alargado metálico
su abdomen plumilla aguda
se carga de tinta permanente
de huevos minutos de plata
que inyecta en nuestros cerebros
nosotros los monos-gusanos
cuando acabamos de nacer

Crece dentro de cada uno

una oración sinuosa de reflejos
que anda comiendo dejando
sus túneles un ramaje de sintáxis
Devora en propia secuencia
las masas rojas de las pasiones
hasta el prolongado colapso
de la piel arrugada y vacía

y sale el imago nuevo

de la boca desplegando a sus alas
inmensas con venas transparentes
de consciencias recursivas
de sí mismo   Espera en silencio
antes de que vuela graciosa
rumbo al próximo universo
florecido de mentes alumbrados

sin el espejo canibal de palabras

por Bryan Serba—otro loco, mismo tema