Chasing Tail

Pop your collar
I have met the Mad Hatter

Have you?

Cut my lips on broken theories
lost my tongue
learned to shut up
and listen

Ears waxed with tomorrow’s ashes
vital organs exposed in serenade

Laughing at the blood and licking
our way back to center plasma

Seven layers of smoke coat your lungs
I have witnessed all ten eruptions

Have you?

Enough poison fills those vials
to drown our final prayer in slumber

Morphine gods and silicone dreamers
plastic kisses and crystal groans

Scratches of sand sharpen focus
forced to shut up
and listen
dehydrated in the desert

The taste of halogen and furies
mute, burnt, spent, extinguished

Beneath the flames decrees fall silent
judgment has no value in a void

Stealth white rabbit safe with secrets
never will reveal what isn’t sought

Burrowed in the cold forgotten earth
chewing on the cud of all our questions

Salt Replaces Sugar

To Helen of Troy
To the golden udders
of San Francisco

To dolphins in the rain
dancing to the song of solar
whales gone sonar

To the Egyptian bride
stranded in stampede city

it’s a pity
but not a shame

Divide the tears –
to each
their fair share

and suffer on the farm
until salvation fills the trough

To the rat plague
To the locust swarm
To the stallion stuck in rut

Cancer has never preened so sexy –
all the same old world problems
kiss anew

To the tongue of seal on cheek
To the fish lost in the sea
To the last lamb left in line
To the lobster’s dead opine

Scott Thomas Outlar lives and writes in the suburbs outside of Atlanta, Georgia. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Selections of his poetry have been translated into Afrikaans, Albanian, Bengali, Dutch, French, Italian, Kurdish, Persian, Serbian, and Spanish. His sixth book, Of Sand and Sugar, was released in 2019 through Cyberwit Press. He hosts a podcast, Songs of Selah, that airs weekly on 17Numa Radio and features interviews with contemporary poets, artists, musicians, and health advocates. More about Outlar’s work can be found at 17Numa.com.