poetry

you’ve got it in you, kid

hate to say it,
           it’s unfortunate but true—

you could have been anyone else
           you could have had anything

but! no such luck!—

you’re a rotting leper,
           a terminally ill mental case
           with a new disease

you’re a boy genius
           teetering on the edge
           of holding the cure

now if you’d just get sick enough
to want it bad enough
           to pull it out of you already

he’s buried somewhere, thank Blah (or, if not, even better):

america sucks to fuck??

na!; earth only sp-
                                  ins
to win—

for itself & no one!!
     else (except you)

you’ve got it wrong;
you’ve got it backwards:

what goes around doesn’t always
come around, and what stays around
doesn’t always stick—

IT’S OVAL, YOU IDIOT

(it’s calm as a peach;
                         orange as an apple)

and for Blah’s sake:
just be a tangerine.

Worth a Shot?

It’s not about who
predicted it (because
no one did), it’s
about who was
prepared for it (not
who wasn’t),
and that is:

the doom ’n gloomers,
           the poets,
the singers ’n seers,
the downtrodden ’n
           forgotten,
the manic ’n the depressive,
           the anti-socialites ’n
contra-non-believers—

who never forgot
that things were already
fucked—we’ve been
fleeced from the jump,
the genesis founded
upon unbounded
generational swindling;
the cornerstone since
time immemorial (in
rough shape, battered ’n
bruised beyond
recognition—like there
ever was a point of
reference anyhow)—
and that they had to get
worse, before they
had the slim,
shimmery silver shot
           of getting better.

Pages from the Netherrealm that Nevermiss (III.)

A series of poems conjured from the minds of J. Evan Rogers + Bailey Gaus

To seek Truth—if She still breathes—follow
the Vermilion Kittens, their eyes aflame
with candor, through Sincerity Alley
to the Wall that Reasons Back—lest the Pendulum
of Morality defers to its own direction: back-to-
forth rather than side-to-side.

The Contrarian arrives barefoot, aghast
with vagrancy, pockets full of static, claiming
resurrection by tessellation, offering a celadon serum
that hums like a neon Eucharist, insisting it will
transmute your spiritual dampening
into an onslaught of joy.

The Forgettable Saint has warned against
this for centuries, wounded with immortality—
unheard beneath the Symphony of Creation,
unnoticed amidst the Divine Cosmic Waltz.

Emerging from the Oracle’s Closet, the Underaged Alchemist
promises the Promiscuous Prodigy—with maps drawn
on their wrists—that to reach the Dungeons of Abundance,
one must resist the gleam of the Gold-Plated Gallows,
decipher the Infirmary of Mysteries, and avoid at all costs
the Parlor of Perpetual First Impressions—unless one wishes to
unknowingly begin again back at the beginning,
never to speak to Him, trailed for all eternity by
the infinite ellipsis in an everlasting glow of gloom.

Enough with riddle and scripture—the illusion and reality of it all.

Step through.

It’s time to experience the Netherrealm from the inside out.

(Back to Pt II.)

Pages from the Netherrealm that Nevermiss (II.)

A series of poems conjured from the minds of J. Evan Rogers + Bailey Gaus

Further in, a flicker stirs
like an inverted firework—
not of Hope, but Remembrance—
a brittle pulse in the Belly of Dusk
where remorse coils like smoke in lungs.

The Whistling Spectacle frolics
hand-in-hand with the Anticlimactic Angel—
on the tip of thought atop the Tower of Certainty—
mocking Time and Truth with their
slow, decaying tongues.

A ceaseless fever dream, the so-swollen
crimson soil weeps with every footfall, soaking-in
silhouettes of the Parade of Regret, as if
Penance was a place, not a plea.

Still, the Tease awaits—languid, laughing;
seething, searching—beneath the haunted
hush of what was heretofore.

The darkest part is a fact of art:
the Heart of the Artifact is hard to find.

(Forth to Pt III.)

(Back to Pt I.)