i

Someone borrowed
someone blue
is how it always
begins. I let my sleep
rip through. I don’t
care anymore.
Ointments and
unguents spread
on thick, slick,
a diversionary trick,
right above the crack
of dawn. Just like
yesterday, peeling
off a skin dream,
all that gray mother
slime cut/ to intercom
voice of God
booming through
the One-Eye Mist,
one I missed,
miss: “This
Is a Test
of the Outdoor
Warning
System”
And right on cue:
Weed Whacker
in skull mask
and dark hood
trimming the edge
at night, scaring
off a rat, scaping
a neat, clean, rigid
plot, all that
slap-slap-slap at
supersonic speed.
Something to put
the whirr
in the worry.
Separate the heat
from the laugh.
I dip a devil’s
spoon in and
stir the story.
Mix the characters
and themes up
nice and glory,
twice as gory.
I’m a sinner and
I’m not sorry.
Fade out. Flash
back: Sister
Cecilia turning
the T of Time
into a bloody cross,
drops of red chalk
to pinpoint where
Xrist the Savior’s
appendages were
fixed, transposed
on the x-y axis
of horizontal/mortal,
vertical/eternal
Time. Same day
the film strip
broke and slipped
from the reel, East
of Eden slapping
the projector’s
beam. One negative
frame of white
light, like a bright
window, illuminating
the cave wall. Squelch!
of chairs pushed
back, bodies rising
toward the dust-
filled light. Dark
dove in flight,
flapping erratic,
uncertain wings.
Rabbit ears
hopping to a stop.
Pandemonium
of voices, snickers,
shrieks and
mutterings, Sister
raging, fumbling
in the dark.
A peace sign
does a 180, loses
a finger, cops
a harsh, rigid
skeletal pose
(of vertical Time).
First one I’d
seen. But as soon
as I saw it, I knew
what it meant
justlikethat,
forked tongue
flickering,
the serpent
hisspering
in my sole
mental inner
ear, knew it
like I’d always
known it before.
Mirror, mirror
on the wall,
who’s the stranger
in the hall?
Fingers touching
tentative skin,
pressing firmly
on the nodes.
It occurs to me
I am the Enemy.
I am half-sick
with shadows.
X-ray shows
Why. Ours is but
to do and die. Shots
of end rhyme
like bullets, not
ballots, punctuate
the night. Perforate
and detach. A
jagged staccato
ride down rapids, not
rivers, with arms
outspread. Turn
off, tune out, drop
dead. A pun
is a kind of rhyme.
So is eternity.
So is a joke.
So is the bombast
/bomb blast
that puts the up
in smoke. To weep,
perchance to
scream. Life is
but a dream. A brief
digression, rounded
with a bleep! Malignant
or benign? That is
the question.

ii

The Taxi runs on
Time! Highway
sign after highway
sign, each a gentle
ephemeral ghost
slap of rhyme.
God’s thumb
riffling the pages
like a flipbook
onetwothreefourfive.
Landscape whizzing
Bye. Animated movie
I was never really
in, never a part
of, instead always
observing, sifting,
recording, one
step removed.
Have You Seen Me?
The Fed Ex arrow
points the way.
Big savings on hip
new phones. Twelve
hundred dollars
down on my old
phone. Mastercard
whipping your
bent broken back.
Even a bad day
is just 24 hours.
Something wrong?
Call Anh Phuong.
Up to 90% off!
The Good News is. . .
THERE IS NO GOD.
Be the Lightning,
Not the Rod!
Ah, Manulife, I
loved you when?
Oh, peanut butter
cup of yore! Oh,
Taxi that takes me
to the next door!
Yellow submarine
on wheels! Yesterday
I sat on the dock
of the bay, watching
the tide wash the
scum away. Listening
to the sea gulls cry.
I used to think they
cried for me. Today,
it’s all behind me,
the great Alas!
flowing out my ass.
The rearview cracked.
Hiss of tires spinning
the requiem mass.
Flash of darkness
under the overpass.
Breathe in, breathe
out, think fast.
Once first is now
last. The entropic
die is cast. Praise
Buddha this Taxi
has a tankful, thankful
of gas! Otherwise,
we might perforate
and detach.
“Steamed milk,
with brown sugar,”
rising up
from the bowl
of steel cut oat
porridge apple-
cherry compote.
(Remember?)
The past lives on
inside you, the third
who trails behind you.
So, too, the present
in a pinpoint moment
of concentrated
doubt. Our father
who aren’t in Heaven.
The doctor’s hands
turned out.
The future metastasizing
into a Shout: inner-
body Big Bang!
God save the Queens.
All you need is care.
The Taxi veers
right, my distracted
breath disappears,
replaced by a fear
we’re going off
route, over the hill,
far away, save it
for a grainy day.
Kodachrome. But
No, we’re sprouting
wings, Airport
bound, and this
divergence, this
sudden digression,
this divagation
(we call Life)
is nothing more
than simply
our Exit.

iii

On the plane reading
Angle of Yaw.
Suppurations will begin
along the upper lip.
Then a foaming of the mouth
ensues. The head swells
to an office of florists
& fishmongers, looks a lot
like tata’s Kurdish black
peppers, enough to crack
a young Beiruti. Think tin
of breadcrumbs, a light-
bodied wine after a three-
day absence, rotation
about the vertical axis,
the slipstream runs on
parataxis, hard to miss
the marble finish, the endless
capers served to an endless
multitude in a room built
by collective sourcing,
hundreds of blends and
high ceilings, each from their
own eponymous homeland
of cardamom or chandelier,
their arrival announced
like a lucid dream, “This
is your Captain shrieking!
We are entering the unknown,
all bets are off, even steady
as she goes,” wing tip angling
upward, silver shark fin
cutting through the gray,
the final destination
imminent, the open book
half in decay. They came,
they saw, they left a wine-
stained signature on the
corner margin of the turned-
down page: dark-red thumb-
print/spiral galaxy whorl.

iv

Today’s Horrorscope:
If your weakness
is window shopping
for “this and that”
(kaza maza in Arabic)
beware the Piper
but fear doubly the Rat.

v

[Touch anywhere to begin]
[Tom Hanks washed up on a desert island]
[The doctor folds his hands again]
[I motion for another plastic cup of wine]
[Watch the fingers interlock]
[Grow otherworldly, alone, losing my outline]
[Each cell a timebomb ticking like a clock]
[Tell me your earliest memory]
[And I’ll tell you mine]
[Touch anywhere to begin]
[“Come in,” she said, “I’ll give you]
[Shelter from the norm”]
[One stray Count Chocula]
[Floating in a bowl of Booberry]
[The instant everything changed form]
[Justlikethat]
[(Or am I misremembering?)]
[The AI is real and teaches]
[Me/Tom Hanks to speak Spanish]
[“¿Por qué siempre está solo?”]
[Ours is but to do and die]
[“Porque quiere serlo.”]
[It’s a question of X]
[Not X + Why?]
[Touch anywhere to begin]
[The President adjusts his mask]
[Pulling at the rubber nose]
[The exaggerated chin]
[The eye holes cut too close]
[Uneven]
[At some point dozed]
[Watching the slipstream]
[The priest in shadow lays a hand]
[A bloody palm print for a face]
[Life is but a scream]
[Fed Ex coffin filled with sand]
[“All your sins I hereby erase.”]
[Look, ma—no more “me”]
[Towers appearing through the mist]
[Like a reverse dissolve]
[“Oh, say, can’t you see?”]
[The plane shakes like dice in God’s fist]
[“Early one morning, the sun stopped shining”]
[Day the film strip slipped from the real]
[And what I want to know is]
[Woke to cartoon shark Zapped! by electric eel]
[Flashing its neon constellation of bones]
[Eat at Joe’s]
[Written in the stars]
[We satisfy the taste, but not the thirst]
[Keep testing out the deep end with a toe]
[Afraid to dive in head-first]
[And for good reason]
[Glanced out the small oval window]
[Thought for a moment the wing was gone!]
[“WILLL/SONNN!”]
[I, Tom Hanks, am losing my mind]
[Long turbulent bank inside dense cloud]
[“If you see her, say Jello”]
[Captain’s voice over the Intercom]
[“Nadie quiere estar solo.”]
[It occurs to me I am the Enemy]
[I think of James Dean]
[Ticking like a bomb]
[Belly-down between the rows]
[Urgingly tempting the beans to grow]
[How do you like your blue-eyed boy]
[Now, Mr. Death]
[(Invisible as breath)]
[Touch anywhere to begin]

John Martino is a writer, educator, and avid traveler currently residing in Hong Kong. Some of his wayward poems have found a home at North Dakota Quarterly, Another Chicago Magazine, Packingtown Review, and The Southern Quill, among others. He is the Executive Editor at Home Planet News (homeplanetnews.com).