Heath Brougher


My Life Severely Boiled Down and Beatled Off (Take 1 With Hums)

In the life of the day
I saw the light that blinded most.
I found the Great Spiral and Understood it.
I grew the spidery cyst on my brain.
I withstood the jagged jibes and jokes of daily Suburban scum.
I cold-turkeyed every substance my body ever became addicted to.
I brought my Self to the point of not even needing a prop.
I induced this 12-year hermitage. I cultivated my own Intellect.
My own Self. I saw the falsity among the masses
and the insanity of society as it robotically called ME insane.
I tapped into realms of Truth to the point where it was virtually useless
for me to even talk to another person anymore since I was
on such a different wavelength. I took the road less travelled than the road less travelled
and saw the necessity for some conformity which will probably confuse some people
who pseudo-thought for themselves as “think for yourself” was nothing more
than a mindless throwaway mantra to them.
Then I went into a dream
with sugar-bum fairies and loud angry counting instead of trippy orchestras.



Lucky Number Never

You are part of the concoction
                you are a sliver of construction
never fully                                 realized or formed
                despite the Millennia of your attempted Rising
all that’s left              are fragments 
                      strewn about the clouds
turned the color of summer storm
                this supposedly fleshed out thing was never fully fleshed out
because it was only ever a thought           a piece of the imagination
                of the various minds which           sparsely permeate the land  
when one thinks deep enough                   one realizes the conundrum:
 

                                       every Truth is also an unTruth.  

What If (Previously Unreleased) (B-Side from Your Noisy Eyes)

[[But what
if we’re wrong?
What if the wick
of the bomb
is made of veins?

What if the wick
of the bomb
is made of the stringy insides
of the human body?

What if the wick
of the bomb is metaphysical
and no picture can be taken?

What if the wick
of the bomb turns out
to be made of some kind
of Pantheistic destiny?

What if the wick
of the bomb
has already been smothered?]]



Triumvirate Trickleberry

1. you children blood from scream come European fortnight 2. the leaving without smear that’s his occurs my what walk 3. far spot ask different exit well world unfair reach for I find 4. last might from feathers Caesar 5. let’s hear least my supposedly to forget like a

provide mix                 happening pain scare language                 this dream me go                 clay net muscles bulb                 front looked no nothing.                 island’s response outcomes waning                 my literary I call                 handshake songs else things.                 be everything to be                 Octavian.                 did at                 poems otherwise                 remember. to write                 fuckin zombie?

Old Lady in the Wind

It's London and you are you—
enough of the summer and juice! let's feed them away
to content thoughts from under the cloud and cold to the window
where maybe at least one satisfied thought will escape
the constant plush of grey clouds, strongwinds and stolen umbrellas;

fog and light do not mix— they are sworn enemies
deepened by the blur of varicose eyesockets,
especially during early morning when the gust thickens
to the point where breath seems solid
and elbows quiver under layers of flannel;
there's curtains enough to cape me and absorb the drops,
but not below–– down there it's only black hell, paper shreds
and shriveled legs trying to keep themselves planted on the ground;

it's ceaseless and you are windblown—

enough with wigs! let the breeze run its fingers
violently through her hair, displacing it in similar fashion
that light is displaced by fog;
something amiss; with me
watching it sucked into the sky and fall
like a raindrop onto a bald head;

it's the feeling of Vodka with empty stomach;
enough with the stumbles! start to balance on a curb;
lose a shoe in the endless rivers of overflown gutters
and realize that wishes in the wind are wishes on the wall;
there seems to be a quaint serenity just inside this sill, a thin refuge
from the chaos and lightning swooping down elsewhere,
striking, flashing bright bits of shard against a helpless facefull of wrinkles.




Heath Brougher is the co-poetry editor of Into the Void Magazine (winner of the 2017 Saboteur Award for Best Magazine) and has published 3 chapbooks, A Curmudgeon is Born (Yellow Chair Press, 2016), Digging for Fire, and Your Noisy Eyes (both published by Stay Weird and Keep Writing Press, 2016). He recently published his first full length book, About Consciousness (Alien Buddha Press, 2017). He is a Best of the Net Nominee and has had his work translated into anthologies and journals in Albania and Kosovo. His work has appeared in Of/with, Chiron Review, Otoliths, Brave New Word, Full of Crow, The Ibis Head Review, Degenerate Literature, Sonic Boom, Lotus Eater Magazine, Futures Trading, BlazeVOX,, and elsewhere.
 
 
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