Poetry: Selections from Oliver Baer

91. The world’s crying again tonight, my child

It saw our holiday on the River of Tears

The sky laid its neck bare

A stiletto sunset sliced its contents

Over julienned clouds

The big black curtain of night

Cut off our light

Diced phonics fell into your ear to reveal

I got knives

We ate our funnel cake

In that carnival hallway

Between the river and the forest

The water pared you away from me

Strips of shawarma floating ever onward

It was a jackknife evening

Options folded in on each other

Medea’s choices locked in line

I walked back to the forest

The wailing trees ate away my grief

Darkness skewered me to the path of the next river

Awash in forgetfulness I greeted my changeling

So, slip into a switchblade sleep, my changeling child

Dream while the world is weeping

 

 

 

 

 

102. Until the soon comes

Until the bit then

Chomping at iotas for release

A tad of temporal traffic whizzing by and by

A morass of moments muffled

The gag of going-to-happen promises filling our anticipation

A ball blocking minutes from eking out ort by ort

We wait…

Sitting on our hands

Our thoughts fidget-spinning through anxiety’s funhouse

The hall of mirrors all atitter

The glass hiding its laugh in jitters and whispers

We stake our claim to certain spatiotemporal coordinates

Recognition pending

Our identity in flux

Pacing out an antihero origin story makeover

Empty routine swapping on infinite replay

A vaccination tale poised in the wings

Its answer serum obfuscated

Until the thumb-twiddling finger-drumming soon comes

Oliver Baer was the editor for Cthulhu Sex Magazine and Two Backed Books. He mostly writes dark poetry and horror stories with the occasional blog post, review, essay and play. He has two books out, Letters to the Editor of Cthulhu Sex Magazine and Baer Soul. He was the writer for Deena Warner’s Halloween Card project in 2021. He also has a CD of poetry set to music, Gathering Souls by A Conclave of Baer, which became a show in NYC.