THE MIND

I recognize menace, the absence of rise
and fall,
her scarily steady drone.
It stops and starts.
Gusts of wind punctuating the silence.
Sounds like distant howls.
Each pause
shoos away alarm.
Intermittence of soft-spoken cries
sows doubt.
Relief is soundless.
The hoarse wailing doesn’t resume.
It might not have been what it was. Is.
What I hear I learn to ignore.
What I see I transfigure.
The greatest distress imaginable
is the means to its disbelief.
The mind’s lies are its rescue.
The end of the world is my salvation.

Alan Hardy has for many years run an English language school for foreign students. As well as Fixator, poems recently published in Outposts, Ink Sweat & Tears, Sideways Magazine, The Candyman’s Trumpet, Orbis, Forge Zine, Lothlorien, 100subtexts, Alien Buddha, Mad Swirl and others.

Keeping on

This dark midnight thing
clings like a dying worm
flicking its tail weakly
yet keeping on

You give it a special box
high on a shelf

When it falls
years or decades or
centuries later
and hits you on the head
you end up with the ability
to see through
the universe and back
into your particular mind

and yet it’s keeping on

A.Z. Pine writes in the Pacific Northwest with work forthcoming in scaffold literary magazine and Eunoia Review.