Doused in Lethe, We Soil Our Lay

Doused in Lethe, we soil our lay.
Harrumph’s reign tickles torpid tongues.
We skull-fuck stars for light’s decay,
Forgo such lube, our fate’s phlegm-thrung.

Gadzooks! The sun aches for a knife.
Concoct sepulchral humors on the hour.
Taste my tumors, sin-eating ascent to wife
Imbibe! Tanic pedestals glory such a shower.

I scar to defame beauty’s clutch.
Natural design but petroleum plastics.
Lunacy lends monthly; red right hand touch
Upon my forehead, microdosing Styx.

Ode To A Maskless Seraphim Eating McDonald’s in the Handicapped Subway Seat

O! Mayonnaise spreader bar of voyeurism
Corruscating hydrogenated oil upon the meek
Pierced nips to harkon back chains of him
I have no god save Slushee condensation
That is droplets of blood for lube, my no love
Baby curls are legal still, for now
I pray your pennies grow rampant in closed quarters
Diva cup marination to play Christ upon my forehead, you
being raised on Disney
A eucharist wherever eyes wander,
want of endless Saharahs to gormandize the chalk outline you sweat into
5000 Egyptian silk thread count has nothing on your fine fur, I guess
Tell me I’m right to spit in Venus’ mons pubis
For marble regalia taunts the stench it has not
My perineum is a ghetto for the heat you inspire
Filth is but an afterthought to public foray

Fortuna

Sinus drip of man,
Brush-stroked into Madonna,
Chortling through tobacco-tinted teeth,
Chanting heroic tales of styrofoam,
Hemorrhaging us a covenant of existence,
Queening our faces mucific with pedestals
As if concrete commanded the Dow.
And for the maternal lies bestowed
Maudit be damned; the sole sane one
Curb stomps the sea against the sun.
Child of the amalgamation,
A piebald of fecal waste and placental nurture
Cast out to free frolick twixt black powder shell casing hocks,
Emerald crown on layaway,
Fed boiled hot dogs and bread to soothe the murder,
Raised by C02 emissions whom require home security.
Unbeknownst the power of the Luciferian beacon
Within plastics beckoning none,
Such salacious sins of solitude;
A droplet of come flops, unity got glued.
Drippy sky run-off
Plasticines my coat-tails.
Lavish as child labor fabric,
Crime none of my rhetoric.
Everyone’s a Goddess worthy of jails,
The apple never grew; Eve has always been the temptation.
O! Gapped tooth Lilith of the vestigial scoff:
Drunk on pennies squandered from the hog’s trough,
Spread eagle cascading television nada:
Time’s a whore, chuckling your daddy issued Dada.
Organic genocide branded Prada,
Bloat: a business decision of sin,
Insufflation implies I recognize air;
Here is your declaration of circumcision blood
Upon the ram’s skin:
Initial here?
Peep the visage; God wears a balaclava,
Bodies teeming, bile constructs churches in Uganda.
We only hydrate as an exercise,
Inevitable purge fluid reverberating death rattling on high.
Menstruum of egregious lies,
Snide art swathed with vulgar sainthood,
Each minute licked in fear of nostalgia,
How many tyrants to a Band-Aid allowed by law?
Reams of Gods spit kerosene where they would.
Zarathustra awakens solely for thigh highs.
Salvation is always a compromise.

Lee Levinson is currently at work on a novel detailing the many uses of cellophane. His monomania is archived in tweets @schlock_jaw.

About the illustrator: A native of Ohio, Karin Wraley Barbee is a writer and painter living in Adrian, Michigan. Her work has appeared in Natural Bridge, Swerve, Fjords Review, Columbia Review, The Diagram, Whiskey Island, Found Poetry Review, Glass, Sugar House Review, The Rupture, and others.