The Future is For Ghosts
The future is for ghosts.
Breeding placidly behind screens.
Electronic doubles, dead echoes,
Hollow shells of familiarity.
My mind is a ghost.
My body an echo.
Never myself,
Just a lump of days gone by
Slipping constantly
Past.
…
The ghosts of my thoughts are
Splattered, dead, across this page.
Lingering restlessly
From some windy night in the spectral past;
Lifeless relics of a man who’s ceased;
/de-ceased.
Ode to a Cigarette
A glowing, pulsing,
Molten ember sits
Ephemerally –
Neither solid nor liquid –
In my hand.
Elemental;
Pure fire made tangible.
Caking over this core,
Dark, crackling webs of ash
Snake,
Twisting and binding
And devouring this pulsar
With each breath –
Inhale, exhale –
The star swells…
Swells…
And contracts.
The pulse retreats.
Ash crumbles down through the cosmos.
Life and death and beauty
Oscillates with my lungs.
But mainly death.
Love is Blind
Glassy eyes nestle softly midst your smooth, plastic face.
Have you always been this smooth?
Animated, moist lips throw out dust
Scraped from the cooling magma bubbling through your veins.
You have veins, right?
I’ve seen them.
Almost.
Lights and shadows roll, life tumbles onwards before our eyes.
You see it, right?
You’ve always liked the stars; infinty draws you.
You feel gravity more than most – The weight of our expanse.
Or so you’ve always said.
In some less poetic way.
I think.
I love you.
The way you think,
Your freckled cheeks, childhood insecurities
And irrational philanthropy.
Did I ever tell you my childhood fears?
Maybe some.
But not that one.
Never.
Can you hear me now? This silent dialogue?
No.
I think I can hear you…
Or my two-way monologues.
The way you process the world,
Churn and spit it back out,
Fascinates me.
I’m in love with your subterranean workings.
Or I’m in love with myself and your face.
Impotent
This pen feels bulky,
cumbersome between my
Stiff, unsteady fingers.
These keys I
depress,
dusty and foreign,
Weighted with familiarity – where once words flowed like wine in
steady ribbons
– rhythms –
Delving down my spinal column,
Furrowing over bones and kuckles
In coursing electrical pulses…
Their echoes tingle…
Prickling
anticipation.
The empty page reclines temptingly,
Legs spread open for me
And the fumbling stranger in my hand
stays stiff
and mute.
Buy Me
A jungle of sterilized, lipstick seductions
– Smooth, plastered, eyelash fantasies –
Relentlessly caressing
With an airless wink and slip of the tongue…
It infests city streets,
Claws its painted nails along my ear canals,
Jumps up and down for my attention,
And whore’s out red-lipped fantasy
– That had better be your wallet
Bulging in your pocket.
—
Alexander Pseudonym is a graduate from Sussex University. Many of his poems deal with themes such as death, ghosts and the sprawling urban complexity of mankind.
