Poetry: Selections from Julian Thumm

The serpent of weakness

i.

There is no fucking Übermensch

just our shiftless disgrace

& the viper’s strike

our pitiful attempt at the hunt

while the gleeful prey mockingly scampers

and we slink back

to our barren hovels

to shamefully milk 

our short-eyed venom

 

Adam’s rib removed 

grotesquely hung 

& beneath this shrivelled memento 

this freudian heirloom

we reluctantly bend

to take in our tails

for the deep-throat ouroboros

the hectic schism

the flaccid failure

the tantalising taste

of our own blandest toxins

 

ii.

Solitude is privilege

a mountainous refuge 

from the house on the lake

a defensive timepiece 

of dubious chronology 

each irregular tick a monastic toll

that rolls across the bridges and valleys 

of middling delights

to the maddening serfs' indifferent ears

a drug to which the over-damaged 

are morbidly drawn

a solipsistic echo chamber 

of cryptic mantras

and hymnal chants

a crutch for the melting face

of one's most vital illusions

Guilt, shame, regret 

(and other things I discuss with my therapist)

The louse in the rim

feels the tongue’s flick

the worm’s shudder

the septic tang on the buds

the saline quease

the concrete fist

the slick of anal gestation

the sweet quiver of loathing

if my mother could see me now…

No black bread or vodka

Hungry & distraught

on a nameless morning

I sit with 

Rodion Romanovich 

in a basement bar

hidden from the lunar waves 

constellations & sunspots

& all their fraying threads

 

no black bread 

or vodka between us

just the pestle 

an accusation that looms

as we cough out our pleasantries 

aimless words nothing more 

than fetid bile from the liver 

of a stray gutter mongrel 

with no more grasp

on its fate than we

apex sinners that we are

Julian Thumm is a fledgling poet from Melbourne, Australia. He studied literature and professional writing and now works as a corporate shill, selling his corrupted pen to the highest bidder. His poetry is an attempt to make sense of a lifetime of bad choices.