Dead Meat

Cut into bits, the muscles drip and drip
Pools of blood plated on polystyrene.
The transparent film holding them down sips
The liquid staining its color, its sheen
Of glossy plastic sitting so serene
As if vacuum-sealed for silent repose.
The slivers of corpse will become cuisine
When in consumer hands, and so it goes.
The wrapping will be sliced. It will expose
The limp, artuated lumps of tissue
That, in fresh air, begin to decompose,
Spoiling in refrigerated mildew.
They'll toss the flayed strips swiftly in pan heat,
Boiling and browning the sheets of dead meat.

poem by Tim Stensloff
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The Cicada

The cicada sheds his skin in summer,
Leaving behind an empty shell, a trace
Of his former self. The callous is left
With the peeling of its flesh. Now, a raw,
Reborn body remains, unspoiled by
The surfaces he felt beneath his claw,
Or the textures that formed against his weight.
A new cicada crawls forth from this case,
And he is no longer any number
Than the Earth that firms underneath his feet.
His wings buzz, freed from the crispness of time's
Dusty chrysalis. A much younger face
Emerges with eyes fresh from the slumber.
Awake, he couldn't believe what he saw.

poem by Tim Stensloff
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A String of Words

A string of words hangs above my head,
Interwoven by the thread of context,
Blowing by the interlocking polyrhythms of the wind.

They sway surreptitiously, alluring
To my conscious mind, a collection
Of ideas that lack the stimulation
To let the fluid motion of life
Unclog itself from the sewage dammed
Drainage ducts of my mind.

A string of words is nestled around my neck,
A noose ready to pull back, make my spine snap.
Then I'll be paralyzed and strangled,
Powerless to protect myself
From the promise of utopic edicts-
The oppressive dystopia perfection creates.

poem by Tim Stensloff
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For Us

In the way our fingers curl as they fit
Between the notches of each other's spine;
In the way my senses quiver and split
To feel what seeing has yet to define;
In the way our rattled, shaking spirits,
Like wandering stars, perfectly align,
Though in the briefest moment time permits

For us,

I would be enraptured and free,
Releasing you from adamantine chains
And into the fires ignited in me—
Combustion I can no longer contain,
Candescence that bursts forth so frenziedly
To consume thoughts once lost and now regain'd—
So that we may feel what we cannot see.

poem by Tim Stensloff
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Unincorporated Insights XI

Disseminating what is maybe true
Causes us to scatter ourselves like seeds.
Our promulgating ideals will strew
Themselves, rooting within our pseudo-needs.
We watch them knot and snarl beneath our feet,
Disheveling the ground on which we stand.
We watch the branches, gnarling with conceit,
Above our heads as they shadow our land.
We watch the ossified stem sprouting out,
Latching onto the world with a vice-grip,
Standing firm as cement, both thick and stout,
Causing terra firma to bust and split—
And, yet, it withers by our desertion
In the hysteria of exertion.

poem by Tim Stensloff
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My Brain

Sometimes I wish you would open my head,
Cracking the shell of my thick skull again.
Through the fractured bone and fresh fleshy shreds,
Maybe you could recover my smashed brain.
It's torn apart in cranial caverns,
Lost in self-made, aphotic emptiness.
You could learn the labyrinthian turns
That guide me to chaotic happiness.
You could piece my scattered thoughts together,
Weaving my mem'ries into tapestry;
Sewing my threads of cerebral tethers
With your hands of passionate artistry.
As the neurotropic shatters collapse,
Perhaps a better me comes from the scraps.

poem by Tim Stensloff
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Afterglow

Afterglow
Yesterday night, I looked up to the sky,
Carefully examining a pale speckling
Of stars. Dusky splotches soon covered my
Vision, leaving a verdigris ceiling.
I waited for the constellations to
Appear, cluttering what was beclouded—
Embellishing the unseen in bright hues—
Yet, still, the sky had remained enshrouded.
Each ancient star hid behind its shadow,
And the suffusive cloak of circumstance—
In shades not adorned by the afterglow;
Rather, by shades of suggestive desistance.
It was as if this veil had insisted
The sky as it was never existed.

poem by Tim Stensloff
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Styrofoam Cup

I crush a Styrofoam cup in my hands
And watch it crumble into a dry snow
That the wind carries from the barren land
Beneath me. I wonder where it will go—
If it will leave behind a scattered trail—
Pieces of itself strewn across the world.
In the future, when I try to inhale,
Will I breath-in a speck of the long-whirled
Ruins of my drink? Will they disappear
In the doldrums, the light, passing currents
And pressures that bathe whatever stands here?
Who knows where all our futures will be sent?
My crumpled Styrofoam cup blows away,
Insulating another winter's day.

poem by Tim Stensloff
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Killing Trees

Ev'rytime I write, my pen chops a tree,
Hacking it down with an ink-blotted blade.
I see it bleed in black as my thoughts seize
My hand and slice into the bark and shade.
I split the tree of its epidermis,
Shaving the skin off to maybe reveal
All the growth rings and perhaps their purpose—
Though I scar its stem where it cannot heal.
I take the flayed peelings and uncover
The tree's inner feelings the more I press.
Further I go, further I discover
I can cut through all deep-rooted distress
Because I am the tree, tall and sturdy,
And I will fall by my saw when ready.

poem by Tim Stensloff
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All the Planted Children

All the planted children: efflorescent,
Sprout from the sofa by incandescent
Beams of smoldering cathode-ray tube light,
And emit the lobotomized delight
Of growing under the phosphorescent.

Watered and fertilized to circumvent
Safe growth with pesticides and repellents,
The grow steroid-strong almost overnight—
All the planted children.

Yet, over time, the suffusive content
Will cover them. From light, darkness ferments
And this glass box here seems so very bright.
Illuminate, desiccate then ignite
Under the virtual green house convent—
All the planted children.

poem by Tim Stensloff
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