The Track

This track is bloated with the grotesque and mad

in their low-wage dresses and top-dollar perfumes,

whoring their hearts for Vegas magic

as angels trumpet perverse songs of praise

for the thoroughbreds racing through the crimson mist.

But under these halogen skies

my faith is restored by the men of the raceway

and their eternal recklessness,

carrying oxygen tanks like embattled soldiers

stepping through a nuclear blast,

kissed by the sun’s flame

and sculpted by a forgotten God

into the last lineage of the holy and sane.

 

 

Gut

 

Under these gaslight lamps marauders plot and pivot and hustle,

starving for the invention of disorder,

speaking with corroded tongues. Indigo bubble vests

thick as whale blubber on the stoops they perch

amidst this decaying paradise of lost souls and poverty

and lucid dreams of journeys through place and time

where men like this cease to exist and are replaced

with inanimate objects born of crest and creed. For the quest

goes without saying and such is evident by the strollers

occupying the crumbled lots and resurrecting their walls

with disdain and merry and lies through the ears of those

not born with reserves nor a gambler’s eye

but rather see this conquering of lands as a black hole

that only grows deeper for the void of life it creates.

 

by Rit Bottorf

 

Rit Bottorf lives in Brooklyn, New York with his wife and daughter.

Listed at Duotrope
Listed with Poets & Writers
CLMP Member
List with Art Deadline
Follow us on MagCloud