5 Poems by Geoffrey Olsen
"deep under, the continual wish to sever" - Clark Coolidge, Alien Tatters
quailing
bent over slowed our sludgy fracture, a blurring
tongue isn't frame, my tongue self
lucidly blurs leers friend taste
stalk of green inference waits
ruptures an open cellular, mimes
crease, into sweet body temperature, a soft analgesic, general
anesthetic quiet that comes over
before sentience
fielded, recording in the quiet of dust, over dust,
in the global oh noes crease
greener acid blank set down for our
aw you're here, thumb holding not
I'm mired again
repletion
mire
eager
deferred for a dim
defense
peoples, plebs seize the plex
turning over the nearness, bulk
bulk of light's bending
a part of me withdraw the split, in
it's boredom, left wondering
a part subsiding, sank under mud
gravity well, given
them estuary
cold futures cast in wave, watch minutes
of power meet despair
a word that's dropped
here, like a tempo
piercing miseries
just to allow this futured flowing
valve
flowering as value
rampant descriptions
foresting
uneasy unpeopling
withdraw within animalized armature love
material weaponry, routes surging wave
the men beleaguer rot, capital's circle
sphere stripped orbit--mulberry falls
mid line on this page, where it
continues, solo, lived in continuum
auto chitter affixed striation, reverb had
me on edge, edgeless, ridden cat-
egories shimmer at the split, at the
concavity glimmering, drought frays in
this draft community infrastructure
realism's condominium, time's tempo
we'd curve into the burn's seriousness,
burn's era errata light to the
browned grass, lumbering cattle capital
human criminals in wave of wailing
some lumbering line which rings
around me, play, the hole here
tattered shatterings, wealth-less transmissions
shared electron breakage released brutal
glow flames flare, concrete rupture, 1950
outer clarity garbles, comes down in the
mote in the beam through the dust
storm, says little wait for an eye
an edge west, plastic left everywhere, counter
mourning writ in nows, leisure,
goes where human animal is cheapest,
reinforced through violence, AFRICOM poem
fund counter insurgencies pooling in
mirrored rose thorniness, thrums silver
gaze mercury reflective song
to swift noise severing link to you
link to your anticipation, reaching into void of shipping
containers moving over the purple luminous
surface, grace of brutal downs, memory
watch the grim analogue opera
light through the purple plastic shard
archive beauteous earth eats opening
thermal luminescence, led, splint as photo,
tensed, despair in mote, clears us
windowed phase wends, I'm bitter at blurring,
not a demobilizing, words caught at the edge of tonguing
dried to hard soil. of this world
writing presumptuous glowing weld
a part the despair wields,
spark. edge improvisation, a clearing
in the destruction
as tone
waiting severe
parts blur out
smeared fear
colors.
Geoffrey Olsen is the author of Nerves Between Song (Beautiful Days Press 2024) and five chapbooks, most recently Livid Remainders (above/ground press 2023). He lives in Brooklyn, New York, USA.