Monday, April 1, 2924: Alex S. Johnson's poem " Maps to Never"

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Bio: Alex S. Johnson is a retired English professor, author and editor currently living in Sacramento, California. His current projects include the William S. Burroughs tribute anthology The Junk Merchants Volume 2, as well as the horror anthology Campfire Bloody Campfire. His poetry has appeared in 13 Mynah Birds, various anthologies and his 2012 collection The Death Jazz, which was praised by the likes of Ellyn Maybe, John Shirley, and Lemmy Kilmister of Motorhead.


Maps to Never


Unscrolling the land across a nodal grid

where pulses smoke-spoken prophecies of the high priestess

whose brown abundance mothers 


A fleet of luminous ships rigged out with blessings,

salvos of lyrical weapons hotly tongued


Limbs engraved with the language of solar deity

jungles seized with a jagged architectural sentience, 

manifesting pyramids with steps to meet the sun,


Regal crimson snakes, forests of laughing turquoise birds

folded from the vastness of origami skies

sheen of the muscles of omni-directional cats

moving like fever in the golden-green immensity


The aura of villages where the nude, 

possessed

citizens,

abandoning themselves to 

frenzied rites,

scarify their flesh with 

maps to never

scaling the heights of the stellar forever


© 2024 Alex S. Johnson

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