The October Selected Poet is

Joe Meredith

Please feel free to email Joe at: grimworm726@yahoo.com

TO GOODBYE FELLOWS

If I morphed into a gruesome thing tonight,
I would move you lovely in my sight,
and change the way you see, forever.

If my heart was black and head too spotted,
I would burn this fucking town down
and love its blazing beauty in the sky.

If I was the last man on earth,
my mind would leap from out of my skull
and the world would be my dreamland, and earth, never again.

If I was a billion light years, I would be,
but not you nor they believed in me,
so now I must make myself real.

UNTIL

It won’t be long until the ghouls.

The tower, it seems, has collapsed,
and my spine has coiled beneath debris,
sharp and twisted.

Cavities are sliced
by the wings of the beetle, desperate
through the tunnels of my brain.

Just when I thought it was going so well,
it won’t be long before the ghouls,
and I can hear their songs now.

And the fates in their graves begin turning.

STREET LIGHT CEMETERY

The summer’s nightfall, apocalypse in the mind,
insect-swarmed street lights illuminate the past
and cigarette settles spine,
and there was the sun setting on a corpse in a field,
and there was the pale moon nowhere in the distance.

I’m not here, either.

I remember imaginary friends,
their whispers and caresses in the bed,
but they never told me why they were there,
and I can’t remember when or how they went away,
and there went mercy, roadkill between my wheels.

The word of God was in its guts.

Here are muses made of primal nights,
there was gentle fear,
there was stirring in my lap,
and her eyes like oceans in the dark,
there was that scent, there was insomnia.

May the sun cease to rise.

Here is the horizon
where cityscapes and seeds of madness sprout,
as ancient as the wind, they sprout,
as ancient as the trees sway,
the soul is never ready.

The soul is never ready.

Joe Meredith resides in Miflin, Alabama with wife and son. He is peaceful militant, cliché Russian, Marilyn Manson disciple. He is also an artist and web designer for the underground horror film production company, Gory Pumpkin at www.gorypumpkin.com.

He has previously had writing published with The Horror Zine, and has had artwork published with Surreal Grotesque.

He can also be located at grislyjoegrim.deviantart.com.