Marketing Plan

There is no space to move. There is no choice
To be made, barricaded in the billboard
Clusters that cloister the singular voice
As it combats a hungry, zombified hoard.
They'll deafen you with their chorusing moans
As they bind your body to brand-name chains.
Then they'll cleave your muscles off of your bone
And scrape the dried flakes of blood from your veins.
The ravenous urge that drives them is a
Thirst for never-ceasing satiation,
An unquenchable to need to feed on prey
That long for freedom and deviation.
They'll devour each other too 'fore they dine—
Feast on their own int'rests to feast on mine.

poem by Tim Stensloff
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Dislocated Limbs

Like dislocated limbs, we're out of place,
Pulled from the socket—loose, slacked and dangling.
Like elastic skin, we're stretched across space,
Flapping against the breezes of mangling,
Distorted flesh full-pressed, flung in the air,
Hung-dried in the diorama-scape skies.
We're pinched in the tight grasp of vision impaired
Which clings, clutching at our conditioned eyes.
We'd rather not see, becoming blinded,
Looking inward on blankness's design.
Through distantiation, I'm reminded
My fingers fit the notches of your spine.
Though we lie apart, twisted and broken,
Our hearts will repair when they're awoken.

poem by Tim Stensloff
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Idiot Song

Sedate me in the narcotic pleasure
That can dull the senses that I measure.
Give me something that can cause me relief.
Right now, I'd take that thing like a treasure.

Just this once, why don't you act as a thief,
Hijacking my highway of non-belief?
Remove the congested roadwork I've made,
Relocate my destination from grief.

Among the phalanxes of barricades
Where the axis of myself has betrayed
The stupid notion of domestic bliss,
Inoculate me with good will, invade

My brain before I let my mind dismiss
The manic impulses inside of this.
Sing me the idiot song, reminisce.
Remind me of the child's feelings I miss.

poem by Tim Stensloff
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On the Sea of Melancholy

I'm wasted. What is left of me,
Caressed by crushing, weeping waves
On the sea of melancholy?

Washed up in the wreck of worry
That concern's rising tide has gave,
I'm wasted. What is left of me?

The sky appears blue and bloody.
The sun sinks like shark bait behaves
On the sea of melancholy.

The sharp crosswind cuts me, chilly.
I'm gutted by remorse's shave.
I'm wasted. What is left of me?

Foggy tropes sound within the flurry
Of a despairing storm's grand stave
On the sea of melancholy.

[...] Read more

poem by Tim Stensloff
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The Past's Hovering Foot Steps

An unpleasant effluvia hangs
In the stale and unmoving air
As your haunted heart loudly bangs

Into the silence, a clanging blare.
It pumps: tapping, pittering
Unlike the feet of Fred Astaire.

No ritz, just beats and blunderings
Fumbled from this: your dancing ghost.
Its transparent maneuverings

Don't disappear, though they almost
Remain long enough to repeat,
To echo back with a swift riposte.

Waltzing reverb shoe prints secrete
An ectoplasmic residue,
A souring of things that seemed sweet,

[...] Read more

poem by Tim Stensloff
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Creative Nonfiction

Let us
now speak
about our
history:
The past as
it was, no longer
to be.
Let us
remember
the nostalgic things
Retarding
in residual
glory.

The past l-o-s-e-s
the luster o f
meaning
Af ter sev
ralrepeetd
list

[...] Read more

poem by Tim Stensloff
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Melt

As an artificial sweetener
crystallizes on the flapping tongue
that rests inside your tensing jaw,
behind the teeth that would cut
the cloth of truth into the lengths
of unspooling, unraveling words—
syllables that splatter on impact,
coloring the air around them the
burnt sienna shade of chemo-****—
a mako tar spills from your eye
sockets, draining the energy from
your world, and letting it pool in
the excess of all the fusked images
you stole from the recesses of
your forgotten mind—
until the emotive capsaicin
bubbles around them,
causing the white tissues
to swell with the heavy feelings
that nothingness conveys.

poem by Tim Stensloff
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Building Baby

I'm

Tired of
Being
Interpolated,
A number,
A figure—
A statistic—
Of the multiplying,
Automated
Factory set of
Characteristics.

I
Don't want
To be
Some simulation,
A reproduction
Of the material
Facets of the damaged

[...] Read more

poem by Tim Stensloff
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Plagiarism

Peel back the skin
To expose freshly cooked meat.
Take your knife to the flesh,
Press it in,
Make an incision,
Slicing the muscle open
And chopping it to bits.
Pick up your fork
And gently slam it through the thin dermis,
Poking holes in the slowly rotting carcass.
Watch the oils ooze out
From underneath,
And watch the salt crystals
Dissolve in the fatty acids.
Pull the meat up
Above your plate
And let it drip grease—
One last corpse's sweat—
And let it hang in the luke-warm,
Living room air.

[...] Read more

poem by Tim Stensloff
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Newsfeed

They'll shove strips of newspaper down your throat.
They'll put their gnarled, arthritic hands deep in
Your mouth to silence the words to be wrote—
The words that describes their taboos and sins.
You swallow the print as ink stains your teeth.
They'll tilt your head, plug your nose, tape your lips.
You'll close your eyes, afraid of what's beneath
In your stomach—churning, oozing from clips
Born in the editorial process.
You'll resist them slinking through you at first,
But soon you won't notice they have access—
Soon enough you won't even be coerced.
When thoughts are force-fed for your digestion,
Acidic enzymes dissolve the questions.

poem by Tim Stensloff
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