Lit-zine
JU
Mike Roach
"Amphetamine Chemist:
The Bloodletting of the Rev. Sly Green"
"Cardiac Arrest Warrant"
"Blind Melon Chitlins"
Mike Roach is a Surrealist-blues poet and spoken word artist from Memphis, Tennessee. He is also a father, a Buddhist, and a devotee/scholar of Bob Dylan and Jim Morrison.
His debut eBook, titled Another, was released in May 2016 and is available now at www.lulu.com/spotlight/mikeroachwritespoems
I went to minister to the slaves in the hills of Percocet
The angel slayers with $7 tongues
Swallowing formaldehyde cigarettes in a valiant failure to spare their lungs
The silent cold has settled into my aching bones
And the candles have melted away with my soul
And if they want me dead, I'll die a king's death
They'll have to take my head
Or wait patiently for me to lose it on my own
Rip out my heart and take it to the scrap yard for whatever they can get
Leave the shell at the landfill and try to forget
Draw my blood like wine into bottles and let it ferment
Save the sadness, let it ruin in the rain and turn to regret
Vinegar on my brain for the maggots in my head
Eating away all the dead flesh
And if they never want me to take another breath
I'll quietly die a poet's death
All alone with my notebooks and my pride
All sewn together with foolish prayers
And in Christmas lights mummified
I.
Am.
Human.
Now that you're hip to the jive whatever you choose to do is between you and whatever you pray to.
But before you choose, go to the market, pick up some salt for our wounds. Then to the hardware store for some concrete to make our heavenly shoes. And finally to the service station to purchase a few bags of ice to take to hell with you.
I wish that for just one time, I could be a decent poet, be what you always expected, write you words so powerful they could build me a bridge to your heart...or, you know, whatever. Then I could be the spontaneous lover you always wanted and jump off the bridge halfway across.
I exist to fight sparkling cartoon Draculas
I resist manipulative mass media millionaire rape fantasy
I insist that there’s no real conventional use
While they pretend there’s more to it than just some sexual abuse
Bohemian hedonists’ broken bottle fever dreams
Blowing rock and roll star thought bubbles
I sleep uneasy with my own deathwish schemes
Stressing over a blind man’s professional troubles