Steven Fortune is a resident of Sydney, Nova Scotia (Canada) and a graduate of Acadia University where he served as Editor-In-Chief of the Arts Faculty journal. He’s also edited several poetry collections for others, and has also appeared on CBC Radio, while his work has been featured and on several radio programs.
SCHIZOPHRENIA DELIGHT
I would fall into these
manifold impersonations of
a soul relieved of body
like a muted dummy dispatched
to its ventriloquist's case
for the next anthropomorphic
slingshot of smack
I would disregard the penance
of entrapped identities scaling
crumpled crevices of compromise
for a clutch of third-person ascension
in rogue attempts at prevention
of transparency in categorization
The goal through it all
is to be reminded of my name
at the same time I'm all too aware
of a permanence in the reminder's
immunity to disposable impressions
on philosophy
I have a way of falling into full circles
(in a failed capitalization
on its processed reward)
and landing on my hands
subsequently stuffing all pressure
to comply down my throat
accordingly deferring to a string of
disemboweled syllables to atone
for all this indecisive transcendence
AN EXERCISE IN NAME-DROPPING
There are seekers I am eager
to recruit
say
Dante
No romanticism
even
in his romantic
love
People ate
each other’s heads
where he went
Not the good one either
Dante found
that place
The intestines of the goaded
blowfish
of mortal fear
Maybe Milton
was aspiring
to numb that fear
in the distribution
of all his cool lines
Was it all a code
or was he the sheep
on a lycanthropic trip
barricading all humans
even their most Deadheaded
hippies
from the best of both
spiritual worlds
Every spiritual feeling
is a choice
Your respective Devil
is a choice
What is promising
is the noble notion
Milton may be right
and the karmic scales even out
But the seekers I intend to draft
are dividers who can rock divisiveness
like Live-Aid
galvanized our instincts for unity
Make me live on the suspense
of a choice and consequence
and I’ll be more tempted
than I care to admit
to be mindful
of a wrong and right answer
ONE'S POEM
Intellectual asylum would appear
to be the remedy for optimal
loquacity miscarried
When the appeal of one's personality
is measured by the dexterity
of one's decibels
there ulcerates a retrograde aspiration
to be a rock, to be an island
fortified by the poetry of the ostracized
Owners of the souls so branded
by body language
that an honorable mention
of cultured eccentricity
would be a conspiracy to euphemize
an incongruous presence
To be themselves
is to pry a fissure of contentment
into plains of compromised comportment
and no capacity of sheepish smiles
earns admission to the shelter of frivolity
The con in conversation
disrobes syllabic status like a Trojan Horse
unraveling a spoof of euphony
to decimate at its source
the confidence attained in one's small talk
on the basis of its evidence in one's own ear
The cajoling army of loquacity ignites
a brash battalion of belly laughs
like torches for the anarchistic culling
of the unassertive into their cathartic Bastilles
of libraries and coffee houses
ONE WITH A BULLET
Free will
and empathy are lovers
exiled in a late revelation
of cousinage
I am no pioneer of observation
but a rock could see the tumours
on the head of this monster
Settling for chaos hasn’t soured
to the sapiens way
and it won’t
long as such danger dances in
ecdysiast gyrations
behind the curtain of epochal
resolutions
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