Mick Tomlinson Poetry

I ignore the dead. I hear them playing cards in caskets, mocking the life I'm still stuck in. I pretend not to notice. I pretend I don't want to play, but games mean everything to me. I desire friendship on the far side of a chess board, or a partner in a fast paced game of spades. I am unsatisfied, instead. a lone notch. a kink of inconclusion. Uno! Oh no, draw four. I ignore the living. I see them finger fuck their phones during dinner at Applebee's while ignoring the beating heart seated across the table. I pretend not to notice while eating alone two tables away, and watching my waitress bend over beautifully the way a swan would when sucking up a fish.

do not dig deeply into the soft wood of rotten thought. you will find layers of negativity, eggs laid barren by witches guided by death magik and black cats. earlier today I crawled upstairs on knees and elbows looking for lost love I can still feel the burn. life is a fart in a bathroom-- shards of broken mirror in sink. years of bad luck clogging the drain. a toilet struggling to flush- I hear dead dung dejection somewhere in the bend of pipes beneath my basement. I go downstairs flashlight dynamite ready for a fight, but instead, I'm in my socks humming Bach on cold concrete again.

I'm writing poetry inside a box that was left out in the rain, left outside beneath the sun- beneath the hard waste of day. it feels different here- I keep expecting a mistress to interrupt midsentence, but instead it's dead quiet and the box feels mostly inhabitable even though I'm trying very hard to make it my home.

this is new feels like I'm trapped inside a cave- a shadow on the wall while my archetype rummages above ground searching for clues to my existence. I've been exiled. decoupled from the passage of time. a cellar dweller burrowed deep in a gown of human contingency. earlier today I was eating sausage and sauerkraut, and now I'm writing poetry in complete darkness.

Smart cities will scan track and hunt anything opposite AI. There will be no hiding from 5G- it will find you buried beneath concrete and auto-order a condolence card from Amazon to sympathize your loss. Your vehicle will hate you, even though you fill it up with electric vibes everyday. It will kill switch itself if you piss off the powers that be with a meme unapproved by The Man. The brave new world that's coming will not be a friend to what you find funny. No jokes allowed. Emotional output algorithm set to an even flow, please slow your stupid grin. CRITICAL ALERT! CRITICAL ALERT! WE HAVE DETECTED AN INTRUDER INTRUDER ALERT! INTRUDER ALERT! Suddenly all hell breaks loose and every screen in the hood has your face on it, and the software that connects your intimate life to the AI digital dystopia, has turned against you and now declares you an enemy of the state . . Good luck>>