Dodo Eraser

Before the coup, I would sit behind the sun
And watch it drop before the horizon.
It would reflect
as far as I could see.
Into the void, I’d shake my voice, fold it into
An immaculate omen pointed skyward
before a loving god.
Before the coup,
my hands knew no flame.
Only Lunacy.
And Lunacy was a reluctant turn.
But that was before the coup.

If one could rewind the heart backward
to before the coup
you’d hear the songs of angels
But this was when songs were heard
and not simply sacrificed
on burning heaps of maniacal
idealisms
the melodic melodrama of the drooling class.

Back before the coup, puns were all the rage.
Before the coup,
I could feel the subtle rocking of the earth
beneath my palm.
I slept inside the inertia of real time,
not this post-Gregorian dreck, this advantageous
guard, this neo-psychedelia where the guitars
hide behind drums and the drums hide behind
a barrage of whimsied prayers and cocks
a thousand miles in diameter.

Twilit arcades and bow-legged bombardiers littered
the empty side streets in the time before the coup.
Before the coup, I had rank.
Now I am a callow breviteer
Devoted to the aching of thine own feet
thine own soul.
Before the coup, when you shouted a name
it was only in exacting glee.
But now it is only in locating the lost.

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Eric Subpar is a poet from Washington whose work has appeared in XRAY Lit, Bruiser, and Hobart. His debut novel, GHOULS IN LOVE, is available from Pig Roast Publishing.