Illusory Correlation
The shadow of the world—Pours in my eyes—
An inky blackness—To fill my dilated pupils—
To cover the ephemeral flashes—With colors—
The kaleidoscopic kind—Stained mirror glass—
My eyelids close—Clattering over them—
Smearing the atramentous penumbras—Like a fumage—
I write a charcoal line—Until it leaks and drips—
As an oil over sensations—That crash into the waves they are—
Outside the aperture of my sight—Clouding in the fog—
Of subconscious misunderstanding—Is my eclipsing iris—
Folding with its lens—As it snaps to trap light—
From the binding blindness—Of asymmetrical blotting—
Tainting the white—By cracking shatters of veins—
And clotting, jaundiced pigments—Of muted behavior—
This youthful, opaque perception—Is an abstruse, open, invisible window—
With its melting shards of broken glass—Cutting through—
What I thought—
Would puncture you—
What I thought—
You'd see—
poem by Tim Stensloff
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In a Pool of Darkness and Fire
Under the spell of possession
Are those that choose to fight, rebel.
With spiritual oppression,
Their clarion calls for death's knell—
All around the dying scream swells
And congregates to leave, transpire
To lakes of heathens gone to hell
In a pool of darkness and fire.
In their eyes lies an obsession
That's locked in a demonic shell,
Formed in thickening aggression,
Harnessed in the soul's blackest wells.
An unbridled thirst will impel
The stuttering guns paid for hire
To brighten the bare night that fell
In a pool of darkness and fire.
With hearts full of bleak transgressions,
Transmogrified by the farewells
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poem by Tim Stensloff
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Cartoon Utopia
Somehow,
I found myself lost in a familiar landscape—
suddenly it appeared
both alien and heavenly,
white
in the absence of
however death would have felt.
I was somewhere subterranean,
somewhere forgotten forever and recalled
in a cartoon utopia—
it's a landscape of shredded paper
wavering in the wind.
I felt the metonymic slide
of the authentic fake,
conscious decision defenestrated
from the skin that
separates me from the screen—
the diaphanous portal
of algorithmic liberation,
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poem by Tim Stensloff
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Autumn, Break of Day
The troubled waters—
tumbling forth over the sand,
flowing underneath
a rising mist, a lowly,
billowing fog that
obscures the distance before
me—slow down in time,
captured in the winter glaze,
shoreline frozen fast,
ripples pausing in moonlight,
waves ebbing, whisked where
twilit shadows fall on us.
Snow begins to pack
on the banks where streams would once
flourish, where petals
would fall off the autumn trees
to float where they may—
drifting through the still season
to the cold mountains
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poem by Tim Stensloff
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Raindrops Mingle
Raindrops mingle
on my windowsill
like bacteria
in a petri dish,
squirming
as they almost streak
downward though
captured
in the morning's
frosted template.
The denucleated drops
fuse in the sunlight,
glare giving them
the glow of
a compact disc's
flipside—
what data does it
convey as it plays
the song that
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poem by Tim Stensloff
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Do Not Worry
Take your right hand,
Palm facing up,
And line your fingers
With your teeth.
Hold firmly onto the roof of your mouth.
Do the same with your left hand,
But grip your chin.
Move your hands in opposite directions
Until you hear your jaw cracking
Against the pressure
You put yourself through.
Let your face relax
Back into place.
Let your elastic skin
Rubber-band back into the folds
Sagging over the shadows on your face.
Let it cover your wrinkles
And worry lines.
Then, try again.
Try to unfold your head.
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poem by Tim Stensloff
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When Heaven Falls Upon Us
the sun eclipses
its sonorous display,
smudged out by the
approaching shadow
of the moon
an impenetrable darkness,
an incomprehensible dusk
settles over the starlight,
sifting it toward the horizon,
fizzling it in a flat shimmer
on the rising sea
floating iridescent splatter—
the hologram of fading light
washes out from beneath
our swollen feet,
calcified
plate glass
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poem by Tim Stensloff
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Bad Dog
No, bad dog.
Stop laying in the sun.
Dreaming of tires
To chase
In the sweaty summer weather.
Stop wondering
What it would be like
To sink your canines
Into
That rotating chew toy
As it speeds away,
Ambling out of sight.
No, bad dog.
Don't imagine any silly tricks.
No one wants your paw.
No one wants you to stand up.
Sit pretty.
No, don't do that.
There's no treats for you.
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poem by Tim Stensloff
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We're All in This Together
A flower is planted in petroleum
With an aluminum stem,
Standing in the middle of the desert,
Sucking up the sun like a satellite dish.
Its stainless steel petals reflect
In the birds' line of vision,
Halving their sight twice,
So that they look through two X's.
The bees that would pollinate
The plant can't find the iron stamen
Or carry the black tar of its blossom's nectar.
They sink into the ground,
Crushed and fossilized beneath mechanized roots.
That doesn't mean the flower doesn't chug
Enough billowing spurts of gray sludge
And carbon monoxide to share with everyone else,
Making all the leaves wilt
Except its own,
Which stand firm and strong in the sifting sand
That funnels down the depths of the Earth.
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poem by Tim Stensloff
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Fear and Desire
The smiling face of Fear looks
And peers upon me.
He tells me of his sister
Desire, where she lives.
His friendly glare is harsher
When he speaks of her.
He does not want me to search,
For I may find her.
It seems Fear is protective,
Trying to preserve
Her safety and her presence,
But I wish no harm.
I only seek her for knowledge,
Her gentle wisdom.
I only pine to know her ways,
Her soft, loving ways.
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poem by Tim Stensloff
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