"Potential: 02:06:2018," "Reassign Words," and "Drown"
Potential: 02:06:2018
You bring the jar of flies
dipped in honey,
the wings cut off
and heads eyeless.
You bury it in the yard,
a time capsule
of your misdeeds
and potential.
One day you will seek your
fifteen or so
minutes of fame
or infamy.
If it is too late, I
pray for the world
you don’t reach your
full potential.
Reassign Words
The clocks are flowers
and fire is a balloon.
The morning is evening
and cows are kittens.
I reassign words.
I rename the things I see.
I shuffle the deck
and the world lays flat.
The bluer the sky the darker
astronomy becomes.
The thin branch is a wand
that stretches the mouth.
It makes the stiff corpse
dance and colors the stars.
Without imagination
the basilica is a shed.
The mad man rules and
the telephone is a poison pill.
The dog’s bite is a kiss
and the dog is a swan.
I climb and I go under
to the astral symmetry.
Memory fades and fruit
is a yo-yo and my flesh is
a seed that refuses to grow.
Drown
I try to find my center.
I am in orbit, out of
sorts, in a cloudless sky with
no parachute. On fire, sun
scorched and dealt a scolding for
being in and out of love.
I am all out of it. I
hear your voice inside my head.
I want the sea to catch me.
I want the sea to cleanse me
of all these desires, to
drown me and to revive me.
Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal lives in West Covina, California, works in Los Angeles County, and is the author of Raw Materials (Pygmy Forest Press). His poetry, prose, and art has appeared in Black Petals, Blue Collar Review, Mad Swirl, Cowboy, River Dog Press, and Yellow Mama Webzine. His broadsides, chapbooks and poetry books have appeared in Alternating Current Press, Deadbeat Press, Four Feathers Press, Kendra Steiner Editions, New American Imagist, New Polish Beat, Poet's Democracy, Rogue Wolf Press, and Ten Pages Press. Luis recommends St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.
