Batman by Vince Bigos. Cartoon by Vince Bigos / Cardboard-Robots.com; Instagram: @cardboard_robots

YOU CAN STOP.

You can stop.
You don’t have to prove yourself to anybody.
You can’t make yourself
more worthy of love and acceptance.
Nothing you do —
and nothing you fail to do —
will make you worthy.
You’re already worthy.
You can stop.
You can rest.
You can heal.

—by Sara Quinn

night before the first insurgency

My street is a calm beach
electric waves
crash through my window.

Sleep leaves the room, I follow.
My dog greets my tiptoed visit.
The kitchen is dark, his tail thumps.

My head is full of rumors;
unrest in cities I have walked
at night, wandering between
drinks and greasy meals
buoyed up by cigarettes and
good friends and long songs.

When you cross a scree, you walk
on basalt eggshells, sliding
slightly drunken angles keep
your hand out your body leans
feet seek the stable boulder
but find only the least-sinking
chunks of flaked ages. If you
lose your balance, you will slip
and you will not stop.

The stories we tell ourselves are
not the same as cupping a tiny
dying rabbit, coaxing it with milk
and sugar from a dropper. We
brine our curds in vinegar and
salt, sweeten with oil.

The feast is laid, everyone has
brought their dish. The wine is
decanted in huge pitchers, fresh
from underground jars lined with
beeswax. The host is drunk, his eyes
sparkle, he sings songs of
love tonight, death in the morning.

—by Isaac Lewis

LUGUBRIOUS BOUQUETS

O I asunder behind the eyes of futile paramnesia
Alone scribbling, stitching in this loose poetic stew or the lack thereafter.
Percolating, erupting & dancing
w/the stench of menacing alphabets
Fragrances of constant conjoined, consonants colliding w/ all their spellbinding witchery.
In the cool calm of liquid blue rue...
(sagging roots appear in the apple orchards)
Winding through my dyslexic brain
Squeezing razor flavored tears gathering on my
flaming goateed chin
A crippling, gruesome, mischievous coven of
weeping colors
Inhaling depressed scratchy pollens
Squirming tentacles of a tormented, shallow existence, cornered by a skeleton crew of
& ashen rainbows inspiration
& digested, regurgitated prayers floating on
sacramental wine
Perishing within fragments of lucid sanguine poems, as I toss brittle dimes into an sudoral
fathomless  wishing well.
O my moribund "PROEMS", engraved into crackling bone sheets of bone of unholy porcelain!
Incoherent rantings, ravings
& ramblings
Well executed Cimmerian words.
Abandoned by tangled gossamer halos.
O Breaking!
O Breaking skulls!
Creaking whispers, tone deaf in this atrophied
& celestial urn of 1000 thirsty sorrows.
Seeking time & the sugary stains of romance.
Vipers striking just within reach
w/ syntactic wreaths
I've noticed that I'm paralyzed
w/ terror, sealed in distal tombs
w/orchid blossoms knotted
w/wolfsbane  & her belladonna
Soaked in ravens blood, absinthe  & ink
for my quill to pen onto these papery apparitions.

—by Richard J Balog.