flight of the drunken megabytes

the graven images on your forehead
are the browbeaten tattoos of another dimension
as you thrust time into a whisky bottle
nothing remains but the clockwork reflections
of the barmaid who sold you poison with a laugh
toasting the soft-shoe essence of rhythmical minds
drunk on wayward paths going nowhere

your poems gather on ceilings of brains
before splintering off into disparate letters
scattered into the ales of careless chance
while vacantly the ghost of yourself ascends
into clouds of incorporeal flatulence
when venturing into deepest space
your sodden brain cells freeze indefinitely
as 100-proof megabytes invade your mind-frame
& climb in, whistling love songs deliriously

as those who reach for the new dawn
find only yesterday’s shadows there
fading out with a child’s heartbeat,
or the I-Love-You scrawled message
finger-written in the heavens

of a
broken
barroom
mirror

Harlots of Virtual Reality

Hurrying lovers crisscross the eternity
one fine day, lost in the night imploding
the grist for a mega-nocturne before
evaporating in years of heavenly lust

They rant & rave in a digital maze
believing themselves beyond reproach,
sniffing the imagined essence of salvation
while lip-syncing arias of the kingdom

Metastasizing each nanosecond before
redirecting  the shape of things
for the second coming of the host’s body
so fervently feminine in every way

Just before your computer crashes
& your resurrected flesh materializes
in bed with the Nintendo game boy

Peter Magliocco writes from Las Vegas, Nevada, where he’s been active in the small press for years as poet, editor, and artist. Nominated several times for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net in poetry, he has recent work in Impspired, Word Dish, Ariel Chart, Midnight Lane Boutique, Scarlet Leaf Review, and elsewhere. His new poetry book is Go to the Pain Lovers from Duck Lake Books.