News Poem by Bernhard Emil Bruhnke III

Just the fracture of the night’s resurrection
swallows the warrior of the moon

Our trivial patronage leaves us again to contemplate;
confusing silence with contempt

A chaos boils in the fraction of stars
and shattered teeth

A caved-in eye socket and
his scorched neck tells
of a grandfather's dog tags
and their dirty kiss goodbye,

Swimming in the final gasp of gargled blood.

Only the memoirs of back alley rage
and the tea stained light post
bares witness to the body of ghosts left to simmer
in the echo of sirens
and empty footsteps.

Because a forty dollar watch
and
a bag of groceries makes
a medallion of a hungry fool.

The tattooed street bronzed
with the decay of hollow voices rinses the air
and
a rusty midnight faucet weeps like a mother;
drowning under the germless steel table,
as a shallow nod
confirms her love affair with the bottom.