Bad Whaling Trip – Lucas Cowen
January 25, 2026
— Four, Your Eyes (your eyes your eyes your eyes your eyes)
New rivers collide old sands
Mother’s leather squeaks, I’m fattened
Brown leaves cling with withered hands
A pleasant breeze turns over all that’s happened
Monks, the backlit stalks of wheat
Cotton balloons sweet on yonder high
The rhyme becomes a scheme
How! tongues twist in pretzels’ lye
Tranquil eyes shuttle blood internal
An accident whole relationships abide
The asphalt coated doe will stand eternal
Beside Tiger Lilies and formaldehyde
Life-size tokens of love mangled
Souls scream to split shale sheer of purpose
Deeper in time fossils boredom handles
Dead, ugly truth hides beneath the surface
— The Unwept Floor (For Neelam)
Joints fluid celebrate full lack of use
Half-bout face tastes lean ignore
Ships safe but stink sulfur loose
Hot lips all been yawned before
Lemon sick on mangled shucked
Brined clean despite the recent rain
Oxidized oysters beckon mignonette luck
Confront our pain without our suck
Half and half and half is waste
Achilles and the tortoise race sapphire art
The hard wait savors a closed, metallic taste
Creatures clown remains too false to start
Horizon dawns a rosy prolapse
Sleep still tonight needs cleaning
Mosaic mouth licked porous clean perhaps
Will now their clacking to be free of meaning!
— Silver Silver
Layers of black gauze settle, excite in the breeze and list
One track course of minefield
Acoustic pindrop startles fist
The superior shine of righteousness in youth
Looking and Justice just seemed like such easy things to do
Garbanzo bean moonman
Snotty thousand dollar sleeves
Recreation skipped for dishes done by lamplight, silent cruel
Since carrying tissues isn’t mean
I’m gonna go be
Sorry
The superior shine of righteousness in youth
Looking and Justice just seemed like such easy things to do
I miss my dog to sign Barry Bonds’s pratfall
Swim three miles just to cramp and scream
Celebration in Parisian psychward
Destination betterment
required for the crazy and the lien.
Layers of black gauze settle, excite in the list and breeze
On track, coursed for minefield
Acoustic pindrop, startling irony
— B?
A man for all seasons
Hair for all weathers
Style an excess of reason
Between grays, affixed to heather
Decapitated whales decaying haunt
Stinking shrunk a sand mound’s ripple
Dolphins chitter by exorcised dimples
Tail flips lackadaisical, like without wont
Slaked by poison, so adequate the thirst
Cannibals eat what they are without invert
Pica victims stuff themselves with dirt
Privet drunk monarchs dying to return
— Nevermore the Spare Light Yellow
Anger’s game played best with rubber bones
Guest out of trouble like the rain
Grace the only slickness ever known
Red cars and rats of largess
Cocky peaces on the march
Promote advanced detest
Nothing too much bearing, lording
Save for time the fleeting highs
Thighs stick clear despite wet boring
Men of the cloth jamming zippers, caught
Aquamarine hovels raze instead
Hot blue blood steams, refusing clot
— Hirsute but barely covers
A fever steals away your dream
This Cloud’s drifting recalls wind chimes
The air you breathe has purple seams
While you’re at it
Tell the eagle arms to mind the gap
Gray river crossing comes undone
Enemied apples rot slate cracks
Rain falls like porcelain to be avoided
A strange warmth of hands we friction anxious,
Tunnel noxious lights and phosphoresce appointments
Within a gleaming
Limp urbane reflections
of cosmic radiation greet
Contact with receptive eyes,
already waiting, beyond grateful
, Bleary piety too neat
— Tenuous At Best
The smashing lips
The gnashing teeth
The bough that bends
A breakage weeps
Someone’s daughter’s a lover
Ketamine dreams hurled a-gutter
Clinic held hands
Sunshine-free, and curbed asunder
Nothing but sherpa
Lining a second spring we can’t afford
Wardrobes for the emperor
Sweating our reward
I haven’t managed a train that works
Subterranean in weeks embolden pure
Subterfuge in time making up a sense
A notation of life’s loneliness