undiagnosed sins

My personally brewed pot; Columbian

coffee, beans ground but a second before being

showered with cold tap. It’s bleak, more

mystery than my outlook; I sit n’ sip one eye

closed. Taste buds be born again. Please,

a bland awareness is still existence.  

I asked from God forgiveness,

the other day,

for some of the wrongs so heavy with traffic

they charged a toll on me.

My nose is immune to scents—

like I’m eating black

plague jellied toasts and all that returns

to Earth is more plague, breadless. 

Racing to the porcelain altar,

my finish line, flushed.

Sick, but I’m not alone when I pray.

Illness for us all makes us believers.

Perhaps Pharaoh never learned how to swim—

Found petrified, a sunken, pointing terd

preserved, submerged by parting seas.

He submits, too

late, and the Truth is truly, we all

ask for help when we’re helpless.

Page 146

Page 146  (Inspired by Jose Saramago’s, “All the Names”)

By: Mark Sutherland

The narrow corridor

formed: a corridor,

narrow minded. This corridor,

stretches—

wall to wall portraits of cranial

landscape. Psychological nature…

vertigo, insomnia, suffered

violent attack of claustrophobia:

enclosed, suffocating, darkness does

not allow him to perceive

limits of space. He can

see the familiar, calming

mass of papers. Shrug off

disquieting feeling of presence

surrounding, terror of hidden,

unknown. End

of corridor, face-to-face

with the wall. He stopped

being, now he is

very young—

a child who hates

sleep. Arms out,

touching skull bones

under pressure inside,

looking out.

la cicatriz

La Cicatriz

Oppression never shows

her teeth before she gnaws your last

decade away. See how your trust drips

from clever fangs finding your aorta of youth.

Her shovels are the Earth’s pencil scratching

        m e   t a l             on           m i n e   r a l,

rewriting crust you can’t see from space

but still, she has man by the throat.

If you drew me, draw me as close as I to you—

I would dimple press into the flesh

of ground. Make me a crater,

I’m your depression.

A low shadow from a

rainless cloud overhead, constant—

friend.

Dry eyes wash everything We

but wind ruminates and you find

 new ways to blow kisses

of kicks and scratch out my ears

with the manipulation of innocence.

These dust floods are my dear

Pegasus losing his footing. We’re

hoofing it,

these souls of mine.

Dig in, dig in, dig in—

Move some earth around

and all that inward diggin’ leaves scars

no one sees. Found my worth in writing

la cicatriz. 

MAGIC LANTERN MAGAZINE - SPRING 2014 Issue

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