Finger in the Pigment

by Steven Clifford

He points to a
streetlight mangled in the shore, remembering a memory
like turning over a
foreign coin. One end
“shiny”- the flip side “rusty”.  He recalls the pigment of that particular moon
improvisationally. The moon
now
looks like a white washcloth soaking in a watery sky.
But on a cloudy day, the moon is the moon

Foreign Street

by Steven Clifford

The sublime clings to our jaws, teeth grinding.
 Stride.

  Stride.

Serene structures, engrossed in
delicate towers,

sheening,
 the tranquil stepping stones—narrowing

into the washy brush. My mouth

turns inside out,
 the tongue

swatting city flies

for nourishment, the joy of perching on guts.

The bare streetlamp—radiates a womb,

the gravel boiling milk.
The sour
the sour, in the cross walk
charm. dee da

dee dee

da. And the traveler picks at threadbare.
“I’ve been here before”.

 Stride.

 Stride.

In Dreams I Do Not Sleep

by Steven Clifford

“Ticks” and “Tocks” gently stream against black nothingness.
Fluxing shades evolve with ever complexity. 
Faces
deform into
bazar figures.
(Tick
tock)
“Nothing is there,” he assures me, his arms around me.
(Tick
 tock)

“Jimmy!”
The opaque window shudders as a truck rumbles through conception.
(Tick tock) Mutters speak over whispers beneath silent screams (Tick
tocks) and his silhouette holds me (Tick tocks)
like a gypsy told me at a sculpting site (Tick tocks)
still in development. (Tick tocks)

Walls swell nearer, (Tick tocks)
the boundaries warp, lucidness melts, (Tick tocks) and
elusions gel with the shadowy room. (Tick tocks)

Psyche hive (Tick tocks) a swarming hiss
that (Tick tocks) recoils at my touch. (Tick tocks)
I have (Tick tocks) delved too deep, organically.

Is the father clock just faulty? (Tick tocks)

I remember darkness (Tick tocks)
is just like (Tick

tocks) shutting my (t.i.c.k..s…) eyes.
[(                   ) I think anyway…]

Seek

by Steven Clifford

Waves manipulate him, and he submerges hard,  
foam encapsulating him, trying…

…“to find
the one true creation,” a distant radio announces.  
And fuzzy interference projects over raspy voices. 
“They say it can’t be found.” “No one knows what it is.”  “It will answer all secrets.” 
"Its out there”…

…somewhere, in the ocean: blues, reds and purples
blur and blend, and every spec flickers so.

He inhales oxygen with no gills.

Tremulous waters pulls him to high skies. Winds quake molecules berserkly.   
His face winces, and his squinting eyes withhold a

faded gold dessert of dunes of various heights of

millions of rough lines,
the vanishing points eased. Loose sand blows through the wide reaches of a
nonexistent horizon. By a change of heart,
he unearths the ocean bottom.
His hand ascends, guck in balm which he digs through.

He discovers a string of seaweed curved like a smile
and an off-centered stone.

White ceiling.