top of page
Writer's pictureA Too Powerful Word

Steven Fortune


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

66 views0 comments

Recent Posts

See All

Comments


bottom of page