Clem Flowers
Clem Flowers (They/ Them) is a poet, low rent aesthete, gorgeous monstrosity, potentate of pow, and generally queer as hell ASD cryptid, with 8 chapbooks, a full length book of poetry, Best of the Net & Pushcart nominations to their name. NB, pan, and living in a cozy apartment with their wonderful spouse & sweet calico kitty out in a desert valley. Found on Twitter @clem_flowers & on Bluesky at clemflowers.bsky.social
Easy read of the poem in the images above:
Blue Hill Beneath Pink Moon
(CW: DEPRESSION, ANXIETY, ALCOHOL, BURNOUT, MENTION OF SHARP OBJECTS, IMPLIED LIFE AS BEING A CHILD OF DIVORCE)
Heat of a thousand daggers runs
down your neck down the spine right
into the soul – the heart mistakes the
sensation for love the excitement for
passion the drama for what is normal
in every other relationship well maybe
not normal in the everyday
sense more
in the way you think is usual from being
born up out rubble out broken glass being
brought up by two sets of loving hands whose
owners are never not hollering at one another
leaving a new dawn of tears every night and
broken payphone receivers in their wake
radio plays the same sad song with
the weeping violins and the beautiful
mourning song in Italian that makes
you every time wish you actually
paid attention for that semester that
you took Italian in your freshman year
in college, certain that you would certainly
be a wunderkind a phenom your first
novel that you had been working on since
sophomore year in high school would no
doubt be a hit once the Right People saw
it saw your genius saw True Beauty in your
words you would be globe trotting spending
a year in France a year in Italy work that worldly knowledge into your follow-up
masterpiece
now you walk the streets trying to
make yourself tired enough to go to
sleep after working the strange fugue
that is “making pizza in the graveyard
hours when all that you will serve will
be the drunks the fiends the insomniacs
the haze the heels the hate the heart of
downtown pouring thru the door begging
for salvation sanctuary somewhere to sit
away from the endless howling cicada torrent
that is city lights in the slow hell death of the once Great Society whose people are left
lonesome
hurting hungry terrified of the fury so
many people latch to in the name of
feeling Better Superior Powerful
In Control Not Terrified that the
world around them is withering
on the vine as we speak and the
world of endless joy possibilities is
but a husk slowly drying into a sheet
of leather out before our very eyes all
thanks to the well toned tanned in a
high end spa lounger old moneyed hands
have convinced them that the Fault lies on
the heads of us who find it odd that so
many take pleasure in doling out Sorrows as
thought they were Nino Brown giving out
turkeys at the holidays smiling for the birdie
since they know no true punishment will
ever touch their precious heads they know
even if it did they would just be immediately
get the red carpet rolled out and a thousand
apologies thrown their way for the Trouble the
Sorrow the Inconvenience and a glass of the
finest Merlot for their troubles as they watch
the tearful march of someone into the belly
of Eternal Misery for the Gaul the unmitigated
disdain they must have for the World as they
marched around living the high life all the
while skating thru life so easy so easy such
is the life of the unhomed God Bless Thank
the Lord that this sort of menace is off the streets and behind bars where they belong
no
no
I haven’t been drinking – why would I?
