The March Selected Poet is
G.O. Clark
Please feel free to email G.O. at: goclark@att.net
ROCK ON
Fender Strat in boney hand,
he plays riffs with amazing ease
and agility, the bones in his fingers
stretching their fleshly bounds
to caress the metal strings
like wire-thin throats, to wring
the notes out of them and make them
scream with ear-piercing pleasure.
Some say the Strat keeps
him alive, funnels the electricity
directly into his nerves and finally
his aging, burnt out brain.
A real dead head, no longer
clinically alive, he left reality behind
back in the Sixties, the music press then
as now labeling him a zombie.
He’s all show on stage,
gyrating to the groove, all fluidity
and jangling bones until his plug gets
pulled and the lights dim.
No groupies crazy enough
to ride his bones by the stage door,
their traditionally free-love lifestyle
not necrophiliac inclusive.
DUST
The sinister dust
just kept accumulating.
Vacuum every day,
dust-mop without stop,
nothing could curtail its
deadly advance.
As the summer days
ticked by, and the nights
gave birth to shadows,
the dust slithered beneath
beds and sofas.
It lurked in forgotten
corners, clung to curtains,
and clogged the trapped air
inside, random rays of sun
spotlighting its ascent.
In time it completely
took over every house, forcing
the occupants to flee, filling the
abandoned spaces like Styrofoam
peanuts in shipping crates.
The dust was alive as a
busload of ghosts. Alive, in
the sense of being conscious and
determined, consisting mostly
of dead skin and hair.
The detritus of those long
dead, their bones languishing
in cold graves. Their souls coalescing
into blob-like, dark entities bent
upon suffocating the living:
clogging their lungs,
blinding their eyes with endless
dust motes, and wrapping each victim
up like a mummy, in rags woven
by the malevolent dust.
DESIGNATED SMOKING AREA
The homeless men,
one by one,
come out of the shadows,
drawn by the scent
of cigarette smoke,
with stories of broken down
vehicles— I can show you
my license—and tales
of dumpster diving humiliation.
One man presents some
yellow perennials, picked
from the hotel planter box—for
the young lady—for which
she hands him a couple of bucks,
gesture matched, before returning
back into the hotel to the horror
convention, to share her
twisted tales of make believe.
Left behind, the homeless men
retreat back to the shadows,
where true horror resides,
waiting for the lure of nicotine
to flush them out once again
into the warm glow of the living,
their stories of woe shared with
anyone who will listen,
a smoke or dollar the fee,
Death waiting back in the shadows,
their tethers held tautly in his hand.
G. O. Clark’s writing has been published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Analog, Talebones Magazine, Strange Horizons, Space & Time, Retro Spec: Tales of Fantasy and Nostalgia, A Sea Of Alone: Poems For Alfred Hitchcock, Tales Of The Talisman, Daily SF, Jupiter (GB) and many other publications.
He’s the author of eleven poetry collections, the two most recent, Scenes Along the Zombie Highway (2013, Dark Regions Press), and, Gravediggers’ Dance (2014, Dark Renaissance Books). His fiction collection, The Saucer Under My Bed & Other Stories, was published by Sam’s Dot Publishing in 2011.
He won the Asimov’s Readers Award for poetry in 2001, and has been a repeat Rhysling and Stoker Award nominee. He’s retired, and lives in Davis, CA.
See http://goclarkpoet.weebly.com/ for more info.