Absolutism
Friday night, six cans
of the uncanny. That’s
a mind trick, das
unheimliche. Black
oil-slick of sight, stick
of sickly liquorice
from the unconscious.
There are some visions
you never return from.
Or if returned, come back
as salvage, damaged and
savage. Visage with jaws,
emblem of heaven. The eye
cannot hold the halls
of gold. On the ward the word
went round
that you were back and
that you’d seen heaven
and hell in the ineffable.
Student shrinks wringing
their hands, crying out
their cataracts, shaking
the pills and the scrolls
from their sleeves. Sinking
to their knees at your feet
as you’d sleep. Bedside
lectern, discerning disciples
listening intently
to the lecture of your medicated
snores. Imbibing
the crystalline religion
of your technicolour
tremor dreams.
Necromancy
This dissociative
disorder renders me
voyeur of my own
memoirs. Watch
the world in trauma
vision. Plasma
miasma mama. Fibre
apparatchiks,
psychotropic optics
make the bodyclock
tick icky. Aftershock
of hits and licks
gives face and cheeks
these tics. Stutters
the synaptics, fux
the syntax, pray
to mantis of an addict’s
praxis. Violence made
the speech tourettes.
Forked-tongue,
morgue orphan
mouths taboos.
Tourniquet marionette,
ventriloquise
familial ghouls.
Miggy Angel is the author of the poetry collections Grime Kerbstone Psalms published by Celandor Books – and most recently Extreme Violets published by Hi Vis Press. He is the host and organiser of the monthly poetry event Speech Therapy, the facilitator of the Do Or Die Poets (a weekly creative writing workshop for people in addiction recovery) and is the editor and founder of Burning House Press.