STEVEN
FORTUNE
Sestina III: A READING
FROM THE UNWRITTEN RULEBOOK
Who am I to
superimpose another world
on this jumbled
universe of voices? When the monotony
of waiting for
discovery invades an empty thought,
a pedestrian day
is pried open, and the prospect
of a poisoning is
planted in its indiscriminate soil.
The seeds of an
identity crisis sprout their first jagged spikes.
Stripping down to
naked insecurity, I hang pretensions on the spikes
of faint praise, and
hide behind the flora of a world
bountiful in
helpings of a more self-serving soil.
Here, omnipresent
oak trees of heightened aspirations shadow the monotony
of an immortal
thorn bush's middling prospect,
siphoning
progressive blood from every heart-massaging thought.
My perception of
the disembodiment of thought
is compromised
when claims of incongruent tastes lodge in me like spikes.
I am cornered into
the potential of indenture in delayed prospect.
A forest of
collected works, swallowed by the avalanche of a world
raging into every
next tomorrow, before the monotony
of valuating every
previous yesterday becomes akin to swimming in soil.
A constructive
tone is akin to uprooting me from the soil
of assumed
accessibility; I convert to slop the food for thought
I reckoned
indestructible to any menu of monotony
inscribed with the
appropriate sterilization-friendly spikes
for every beverage
of consumption mixed by me for a world
whose mainstream
gold all too easily demerits efforts of my Silurian prospect.
The pedestal of
saviorhood, on which so many a prospect
is planted, has me
wishing on morose days that they soil
themselves in
apprehension, having just been bridled with the pressure of a world
sure to not be
satisfied with each successive hero thought
to bear
ideological armistice. Subsequently in
me, pity sponsored by rationale spikes,
and a mental civil
war explodes as ambition fails to compose a treaty with monotony.
So who am I to
resent monotony
when I envision
the reception of prospect
status like a
broken foundation envisions the reception of spikes?
Dusty and
dehydrated is my ambition's soil;
shriveled and
retreated are the flowers of each thought
once watered with
a voice and mineralized with hopeful relevance for the world.
Still, I must pull
out the vines of monotony from resignation's more fertile soil
on my settled
days, when communication's prospect transcends a thought, and a voice
spikes a
volleyball of relevance through the net of a defensive world.
SIDE THREE
I.
Yesterday
will always be
more interesting than today
come tomorrow
Come what may
the vested
relevance of an expired day
we must borrow
till the hooks of
history attach a context
till the foibles
of today construct a pretext
till we're
influenced enough to know what's next
Time is God
Tomorrow's all the
universal dogma that you get
II.
Dissidence
will always drown
out the persistence of a preach
No exceptions
Diffidence
encroaches on the
followers that yearn to teach
their reflections
how to humble the
defiant without numbers
how to raise the
dead beyond the doubt of slumbers
and the soothe the
gloom with which a hunch encumbers
Fact is myth
as long as dreams
harass the known with the observed
CAN THESE BONES LIVE?
Assembled for an
encore of conscience
anatomy and skin
assume their calibrations
and the pestilence
of posture
A flock of
animations
imprisoned in the
frame
of a sudden sullen
nullification
of providential
purgatory at the hands
of a
puppet-stringed parole
They are vehicles
of thirst
Saturnine recipients
of posthumous
decrees deeming
them a threat to crash
the gateway to
gluttony
A steroid that
aspires to exterminate
the social engine
room of equity
Their skeletal
scaffolds uphold a hapless
formality abyssal
in comparison to hollow men
Stuffed men
bloated with the imitation bones
of arbitrary straw
less alive on the
grounds of man's ineptitude
to animate without
a prophet's license
and more alive on
the grounds of man's aptitude
for rigging every
subject with a purpose
and immunity to
repossessed perdition
STEVEN FORTUNE
STEVEN FORTUNE is an English poet who was born and
resides in Cape Breton Island, on the east coast of Canada. He is the author of three collections of
poetry, and has appeared in several literary publications, both print and online. He also has editing experience, and is
currently the head editor at MCI Writers’ House, based in Montreal.
Rapist.
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