bookkeeper!

by Patrick Johnston

Glock & Spiel

Ideas are the most dangerous things in the world.

A gun is an idea made flesh

in metal.

I throw my gunmetal stories at you —

kappow! kappow! kappow!

On the Spectrum

My deaths occur at discrete points

Smeared across the spectrum

Plot logarithmic

There are low frequency

Magnetic field deaths

That fluctuate global scales

And pole flip every hundred millennia

And radio wave deaths

Broadcast from pylons and antennae

Static bursts on the crystal set

Microwave deaths

In hotel lobbies

And digital networks

Line of sight

Blinded

I have infrared heat deaths

And narrowband rainbow deaths

That are visible to the human eye

And ultraviolet deaths

Glowing like nightclub tonic

My X-ray deaths

Are deep shadows

On broken lungs

And gamma deaths that punctuate infinity

Like Cantor dust

Less than one percent of my deaths can be observed

By humans

Exposed to the Elements

And I would dream thin air dreams

Conjured in far corners of the stratosphere

Above the highest birds gliding

Their solitary journeys

Unknowable

And I would dream deep sea underwater dreams

In depths bereft of sunlight

Where pale aliens translucent

Live alien translucent lives

Unknowable

And I would dream geological dreams

Beneath the earth’s crust

Float close to the magma

Shifting slowly

Tectonic

And fire dreams burn

Lambs

Laughing while the world burns

Up in flames

like Ewar Woowar

Earwicker dreaming

Eternal

The wick and the dead

Be quick and nimble

And jump the hurdles

While the world man burns

Whistle Down the Wind

I am misdirection

I am a fly on my wall

I am a journey of a thousand steps

Beginning with a single mile

I am a cheap rental

Cock crow thrice denial

I am old shelves of forgotten almanacs

I am fallen absolutes

And temporary beginnings

Jesus in the coal bunker

I am waiting in the wind

Shuffling grave bound

Whistling as I go

Proposed Settlement

And you will know my inevitable

Like a forest thousand sword Janissaries

Impaled in fields of certainty

Clear and unrestrained

Without anger

Without pleasure

Simply to close the books

Photo of Patrick Johnston

BIO: Patrick Johnston is an Anglo-Australian writer and former professor of psychology and neuroscience. His work has appeared in The Louisville Review, Eastern Iowa Review, Thin Air Magazine, and Litro Magazine USA, among others, and has received a Pushcart Prize nomination. He is the author of the novel The Gaps Between the Stories. He lives nomadically and writes at dr-patrick-johnston.com.