Three Poems
Timothy Collins
Blasted Conscience
the sky is enclosed,
folded back on itself like
an airline hanger while
below, in a psychotropic haze,
euphoria and depression
spin like wheels in a
slot machine – hope is as
arcane as the lake poets
yet some light hither
leads us on
this genuine, refined disaster –
blasted conscience –
I meander where only
I can breathe
my obsession makes me
blush, but true it is:
another age folded neatly
in this tabernacle
in this wireless age, love
and self-destruction are a
smog smeared across the
past. the stars are klieg
lights to this undesiring
wish for death, panning
slowly left to right
Look, we are alike
its’s like a mirror
only nothing changes
except someone’s
salvation
Phenakistiscopic
paint these psycho-
somatic events with
phenakistiscopic
image schemas to
make the feet touch
the earth, home
& safe
the wisterias hang, sit
still and ponder. The air
is empty. The light is
full. Desire is personified
in the foliage. Sounds
hum and buzz and stir.
the world becomes increasingly
real – no god lies behind
those shadows or that
horizon – the forms are
the forms of what are,
concrete mysteries: fleeting,
spiraling, revolving. I do
a double take – the empty
catafalque, the breeze in
this room are absurdly real
The Same Trunk
as the profane were
lost in an attempt
to flee, the tribe
simply coalesced into
a vegetal organism –
a league of limbs
serving the same trunk
the city disappears
into the landscape
as seamlessly as
a panning shot
the will of the
world cares little
for this human folly
it’s our charge to
guard the sovereign
vision, the solitary
voice of the earth,
the tribe in the
hither and thither of
the unitary way
Timothy Collins teaches college writing at SUNY Buffalo State. He holds an MA in English Literature. His poems appear in a number of literary magazines and academic journals, most recently BlazeVOX, The Waggle and The Quint. His scholarship appears in peer-reviewed academic journals. Recent publications include “Wu-Tang Clan versus Jean Baudrillard: Rap Poetics and Simulation” in The Journal of Popular Culture and an article on Lacan and Poe in Symbolism: An International Annual of Critical Aesthetics.
