A Little Spot to Call Ones Own by Scott Thomas Outlar

My so-called soul
is stuffed nonchalantly
inside a squared circle

My flesh is a box
of blood diamonds

The truth is a wave of steam
that rises once the valve is popped

Words pierce fragile bones
that have been broken by rocks
tossed by the rabble

Mindless hordes of stupid sheep
are better off in the comfort
of plush $4,000 coffins

Red velvet sexy apparel flashes pretty under dirt
while the squalor of cake crumbs
is caught in the cavity
of King-Ape tooth decay

There is only so much empathy to spare
before it’s time to start hoarding the stuff
to bring out only on special occasions

Pacifism is a great triumph
as long as everyone is on the same team
but there are wolves roaming loose
as the empire tinkers with the next toy bomb

Ballast on the battlefield
and junkies in the gutter

Salvation has a mass appeal
but very few are keen to carry the cross

Three days in the blistering sun

or forty spent ravished in the desert

It’s the same old ballgame
with a set of doctored rules
that promote the enhanced performance
of high priests atop ornamented thrones

Virgins spill their ruptured chalice
for dragons with insatiable tongues

It’s heaven come lately under satin sheets
but only until the seed spills heavy
into a toilet bowl of flushed remorse

Contraceptive daydream potions
poison glands with corrupted hormones

Jesus Christ loves blind disciples
while Buddha points mutely at the moon

All flowers eventually bloom
but some fruition is never fully seen

Don’t bother removing the locust beam
for there are enough visions to go around

Happy hour hallucinations
are just as sweet as the real McCoy…
like diving into a fishbowl
when you’re tired of drowning in the big sea

Scott Thomas Outlar hosts the site 17Numa.wordpress.com where links to his published poetry and fiction can be found. He is a recent Best of the Net nominee whose words have appeared in venues such as The First Line, Words Surfacing, Yellow Chair Review, Harbinger Asylum, and The Mind[less] Muse; he also writes a weekly Sunday poem for the social justice newsletter Dissident Voice. Scott’s chapbook “Songs of A Dissident” is forthcoming in January of 2016 through Transcendent Zero Press.