three poems
by Mark McConville
Malfunctioned Design Of Life.
The glow
The gleam
The light that cuts through the darkness,
Forever in my mind, forever aiding me in my pursuit of peace, in a reckless world.
My friend told me once
That love can be a potion
For loneliness but sometimes it can,
Kill, or leave us caught up in despair and the malfunctioned design of life.
I also saw paradise burn,
I witnessed a utopia reject me like a blemished piece of fruit, a rotten core.
And the only one who stood by was a dog of war,
an animal with more love than a human innovator,
Than a person with sincerity and a composed mind.
It may sound strange, but my last letter will read of painful days,
the morose days, when magic had lost its power,
its urgent properties of relief.
To my son, I am a hollowed-out piece of flesh,
a depressed mule,
a character without a script,
a screaming mantis, dying for solitude.
In the atmosphere I will split
And I will be at one with the oxygen
Particles of a life that once thrived.
Blackened Skin
I escaped the arena of broken bones
Pushing my shopping cart through the streets of impurity,
Looking at the smoke lift from the drains and seeing rotting food fester like
Blackened skin.
The roads were not congested
Like they were last Christmas
When normality was a pivotal experience
When people were wrapped up
Spending money on magic, materialism,
And their hearts were intact, the bloodiest organ.
I saw rot first hand
Many people foraging for something golden
Something pretty, in the morning,
At noon, and at night, but nothing comes into fruition.
They walked like zombies,
with their shoulders slumped,
and they did not have no words for the scene they found themselves in.
I envisioned a better world
When my parents were alive
Their eyes glistened in the frost
That year it felt thick, a snowy dream.
And my friends, my heroes are all dead,
Oblivion cast its spell on them.
In This Story.
Caught up in a war
With a wicked consumer of poison
He’s not a stranger
He’s a family member
Fragile and using words as weapons.
You struggle to find a logical reason
To save him
As he falls even more
Into the dregs
The gutter.
Hope barges through
But gets vaporised
And the music is loud in this room
And in your head
Sonic and demonic
The city is dying
Like a breaking heart
And you can’t depart the scene
Where he dances with death
Lighting fires for the end of days
You're carrying the burden the size of a mountain
He's your brother though
A character with flaws
With glass in his cut
Because of a confrontation with a mirror
He hates his own smile, his own eyes.
You are the one to save him
Stability is needed
In this story
A chronicle of needless pain
You must take the drugs from him
Throw them down the sink
Comfort his mind and body
And be a noble ambassador for change
Photo of Mark McConville
BIO: Mark McConville is a freelance music journalist who has written for many online and print publications. He also likes to write dark fiction and poetry.