Poetry: Selections from Andy Gehlsen

The Event

The men gather on the courts,

the sidewalks, the streets,

the massive empty lots of unused factories.

 

They yell and throw their

currencies down, strike the pavement

as if it were their last time,

 

curse and cheer on

the wriggling worms making

their uneventful slug across the finish line.

Mutilator

This one tries not to recede,

Even though that is what waves do.

Crashes forever like Normandy, ever and ever after,

Eating the edge of the world away.

 

It hinges for a while like a removing jaw,

Sifting into the ether.

A seismic crevasse is its legacy.

 

It births death, raises it till it knows what it does,

And yet doesn’t stop. It scrapes till the sound of it fades.

 

Till it dies..

The Donkephant Kings

As one is ready to take over,

Previous one

cannot let go.

It will not,

and it pushes

other one away.

 

Calls the next one

superficial—a true phony,

and weak for showing its emotions,

for communicating in a manner

that only desires attention

or some appeasement,

that the way to speak

is as it has always been.

 

Under the rule of true

Donkephant kings,

we tip the iconic kettle

from which pours lukewarm

butter chunks

out of their assholes.

Express sorrow and gentility

these the mornings of our soggy toast.

 

A reflection of older times:

Predators do not floss out the

hunks of flesh in our gardens,

but feed in the darkness.

 

They are rendered unreal

because all that is real has to be seen.

The Elixir

Hair of the dog

Rises up the throat,

Scratches, calls out

As veins strangle

The parched eyes

Like a cloud pulled inside-out

Wisps are veins

Patterning out holes in the wall

Where stars smolder  

Put themselves out like

Cigarette butts,

And little bodies crawl,

Echoing cries

From former lives

Whose hearts,

Severed from all ventricles

And plugs, now

Trample with little feet

Pulsating along little rugs

Thump thump thump thump

They grin, knowing

What we do not yet

And they smash

Themselves into

Cherry skins, sweet

And delicate massacres

A shell on a beach from

Someone with too

Much hostility and fear

Did the turtle

Get far without it

Gas station prices spiked

Seventeen cents in a day

The shells on the signs

Clam up, unchanged,

There are just some

Measures some won’t take

You can never not rely

On quote-unquote enemies

In war, the memory of a

Quote-unquote spunky character

Glows on our televisions

To let us know

We’ll never be tired of winning

Our hearts spew

Stiff petals bloom into

Brokenness as our

Younger cries whose older lives

Course through the night

Like another lightning ice storm

Our voices describe surfaces

At parties

We no longer care for

So we all trudge out in exhaustion

Greeting and grieving

Those just arriving.

The Ashen Death and a New Sound

Ridding the dead

Awake in my bed

Telling them to stop with a pull

As their bleeding young faces

Gnarl elegant traces

Along the bloody sheets and the walls.

 

And beneath these blood murals:

 

Between my thighs

Where their fluid eyes

Wade like lively stars

Birthed out of the ashen

matter of a former blaze.

 

I grow tired from

Their energies burned out in my skin

 

Like cigarette embers

Warbling softly inside the tray

 

As our dead bodies nest around

A burning table

 

Wasted, recollecting,

Referring, and recording:

Old acts in new waves again.

The Stash

He laughs

And they all

Surround him

As he absorbs

The energy

Of getting high

Off his own stash.

 

They leave as he

Cackles just as much,

Snapping a match head

Into combustion to

Glow a deeper, brighter radiance.

 

And brighter he flows

But no deeper he goes

As they no longer watch

Him burn into

A smoldering,

Withering

Pulse.

Andy Gehlsen studied writing and film in college while working at a library. He also helped develop scripts and wrote reviews for the college radio station. He has since worked jobs at all hours and has been published under the pseudonym Eli Dawson in Iron Doves anthology and Andrew Christian in Dark Entries Journal, Wrought Journal, and Tales from the Moonlit Path. He has work forthcoming in State of Matter and is grateful for weird friends and a steady diet of horror movies growing up.