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Brazenhead Poetry: November 3rd, 2017

Collide Escape Written by Derrick C Brown & read by David Trudo

Whatever you dropped in the dark

can be recovered in the morning.

We will find the turquoise ring

that clutched the mud and grass

as I ripped your costly jeans,

down to your soft calves.

The night rain, beading upon your skinny spine.

If you were drunk, I didn’t know.

You didn’t say anything stupid.

Your tongue was blossoming,

pronouncing your kiss, cleanly.

I was glad your breath was hot enough

to melt the night resin off of me.

I read my hands down your simple gospel

and I no longer need 34th Street miracles.

Are you sure you want this mess?

I am a submarine

full of gasoline

and you’re waterproof matches.

I am suspended in the cinema of that moment

next to the house

collapsing in the dirt

where I needed you.

Fathoms under fathoms,

that’s how heavy I laid upon you.

What are you to me?

You are more than on my side,

you are the weapon on my side.

Safety off.

Rest under the shadow of my gut.

Unsentimental kissing.

A gushing reveille for strangers becoming victorious.

Walk through the valley of the 5 o’clock shadow.

Pyrokinetic honeysuckle, let’s boycott the hocus pocus

and get straight to the secret. . . .

Are you the one snarling in the family photo?

Are you the one crackling voltage in the yearbook?

Then you are the pearl I steal.

Your eyes, a kaleidoscope of collide and escape.

Navigate to me by the map of fallen stars.

Love rises back to you

like an escalator fragrance.

Struggle Written & read by Dan Chung

youth's powerlessness gives way to life's only task: to be in wholeness

standing beside you

who taught you to treat yourself

with self-punishment

life is whatever seeming hermetic fortress water wrung from stone

wild mind despairs

i don't need your permission

to love existence

constant tug o’ war they love me they love me not leaking energy

get your hands off me

control ownership release heart exorcism

guidance will happen

overwhelmed and unworthy

deep wounds heal with time

live full crack the shell alchemize the gold within transform the tin soul

borrowed suffering never yours to begin with it can be returned


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