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A GIF that keeps doubling back before it spells out
DEATH . . . and holds for two counts before
Bursting into a rainbow background
Gently kaleidoscoping clockwise
A lamb at its center
With an absurdly large key dangling from its neck

This is the death of the monocle
This is the beginning of the beginning of the beginning
This is the past rent asunder
This is the furrowed brow, bent to the task

Don’t believe those old bromides
About compulsory group think
And utopias
Only improvisational means
Will do.
 
 

Chesterfuck

‘King me!’
I shouted from way in the back
Standing up in a barrel booth
By the pinball machine
Not even your anointment
By sebaceous unction
Can kill my vibe tonight
Like starlings lifting off in flight
Like a gorgeous pheasant taking flight

After the coronation
I’m tearing down the road in what can only
Be described as a roadster
Simultaneously psyched for you
The big kingfisher
And me
(There are 1000s of me)
‘Chamberlain to the king’ has a nice ring to it
I tell myself
As I park outside a roadside pub
And raise a glass of sherry to you
The glint of which
Draws me up short and
Under my breath (where no one can overhear me)
I whisper:
‘He who holds the conch calls the shots’
 
 
 
Judson Hamilton lives in Wrocław, Poland. He’s published a couple of chapbooks with Greying Ghost Press and most recently a novella with Black Scat Books.