Four poems by Brian Gore

Busker’s Blues

Going, forever going – the world you wouldn’t see otherwise. The jester is most wise. Listen close to his tales. Hobo clown in Picasso blues holds a bindle and a harmonica in his breast pocket, ready to entertain, thirsty. Passers-by do not laugh. No one can hear the buskers’ blues. Everyone’s got headphones, or a cellphone. No one wants to be bothered. The stories are not untold, only unheard.

Labor Song

We started for ourselves. Now we owe the bank
Commemorate the times lost while we were blinded by faith.
Put a banner and a flag at the end of our driveway.
Knees bend forward for work, bowing to the lynchman.
The minor stuck in squalor takes his dollar to the rich man.
“Sunny day sunny day sunny day sunny day”

The King Laughs With Pride

I wear an iron crown. Thistles bow to me, and I walk, bare-heeled, across their spines. A battle, midflight, high-noon; a hawk’s talons unsheathed at the heart of a vulture with talons unsheathed in return. I am holy. Gnats plaster prostrate to my sweating body. I look forward and follow my gaze. The dirt is cracked and I am pelted by loose granules, and in my nose and the creases around my eyes, and in the cracks of my lips. But I am king here. Dry, hot, I wear an iron crown. Hornets attack my arms. Scorpions sting the tops of my feet. Tarantulas cross in front of me, screaming. I drink from the cactus before removing the spines and savor the puntures in my tongue and cheeks. I grab handfuls of earth and burning matchsticks burrow beneath my fingernails. Moving toward a beautiful figure silhouetted, long hair blowing off her shoulders, she recedes as I approach. I never reach her. She laughs at me, a holy despot leading his cause before antagonizing serfs. They do not understand me. I wear this iron crown and they do not. I made only one. At any time they may overthrow me. Coyotes at midnight will leave my entrails for the crows tomorrow. Or a rattlesnake will bite me for nothing but to prove a point. I may be overthrown, fed to my kingdom, left to the endless appetite of the sun; but they have yet to coup. I maintain my trecherous walk through this everlasting desolation I own. Pocked with welts and boils, melanoma spots grow among my naked body forever whipped and slashed by the gods. No shade, no shadows cast. When the creatures of my dominion do overtake me, I will be torn apart, but I will go laughing, for they will find no sustenance in me. They will tear me open and find nothing.

Gates Of My Voice

Camels march toward the needle’s eye that sand cannot trespass. The gates of my heart are flung open and floods of locusts pour through, devouring every leaf. A snake unravels from a spool of thread in harmony with my flickering uvula. As I make my declaration, the serpent sheds its skin. Coughed scabs fall from my mouth. The garden is bare and a sandstorm blasts the camels and clogs the needle’s eye. At the front of my voice, locusts make exodus to feast elsewhere.

Brian GoreBrian Gore is a writer of short stories, poems, and songs. He currently resides in New London, CT and has published several collections of original works including “Barstool Ballads” and “Eleven Stories For Short… Attentions” as well as coordinating a collaborative project entitled “A Collection of Poems by Various Poets Regarding the Line ‘10,000 Miles of Farewell'”.

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