Honeycopters

Chores: All those amid clear and fulsome gods of July,

held down by the paws of child-striped dogs.

The variegated shades of pierids bundle the air at my ears.

Scatter in the outside house, moving chores together like

a shark's dentistry, carry the skull of a possum to the trash.

Burst profane for a knocked toe against a rigid,

quarter-surfaced brick.

At noon, the sway of rotten things, sweet things, quivered.

Retch-wheeled tricycles fresh through a dog's leave,

and hymenoptera honeycopters droning close to the eyes,

all in the day where I spark.

Once dim, I am the pig of twilight, and rouse my blood

with a needling of sober stories.

The lungs sputter, hawk's wing draw of air,

and all the time they spread me to lethargy.

Black clouds with the inverse kindling approach as irons,

and by lobs they've darkened the day to pitch-night,

as the ground shocks my feet with treacherous gravel.

By midnight, all is bottom-world, dead, and the ember

in my hands has gone out, cold.

This Pit Will Let Loose Crucifers

Atop this mania my primate eyes are easy,

your shovel in my hands, a biting removal

of wet, vulgar soil-- still, it is your mania.

Ruckled and ruttish, repellant yet fetching,

I stamp the spiders from dirty science,

holy scrape of steel against stones,

and you in a thin-stitch dress,

shaped in thrift and a long way,

after you lance my head with a spade-stare,

after I describe my dislike of kale.

Am I in the soil? Another thing,

am I the pain in the flesh

that calls dresses and grime, a human kale

that makes locusts out of eyes?

I am so hungry and ugly. I stamp in my belly.

Flung like a caught fanatic, greasy

in the backyard's death and life pit,

planting your crucifers, burying my hands

in both our inhumations and cradles,

here are my hours atop this mania,

your soiled dress,

my feet and shovel the oars that propel us

through the meter of the Earth,

the clock in our chests, the crucifers

we will conjure and care for.

Full Bloom Everywhere

He trusses no lightness, tapping a valve

in skunk-brown eyes to release his grinder thought

in shots, in glances.

Suddenly Saturday is young women, lamps lit,

unreluctant as poured, thin pitch.

The monomial collapse of his ogler's bone struck

in his middle age, but he recoils for short durations—

the coin plink of a soddy-minded man at a peep-machine,

or a child evicted by birth from a god's head.

Ray Succre currently lives on the southern Oregon coast with his wife and son. He has been published in Aesthetica, BlazeVOX, and Pank, as well as in numerous others across as many countries. His novel Tatterdemalion (Cauliay Publishing) was recently released in print and is available most places. His second novel, Amphisbaena, is forthcoming in 2009. He tries hard.

For inquiry, publication history, and information, visit him online, HERE.

Read more work from Ray Succre.