Two Poems by Jeffrey Grunthaner

Falling apart in my backyard

2 ghosts pursue me. The ghost of sleep
& the ghost of wakefulness. In sanguine
perches
They reside in meadows forever. A prickling
Grass laces under their feet lacings. What a
gas! Now
                     the moment degenerates into
      PLATITUDINOUS
aegis suicide encounters with the True
Lawyer
inhabiting that (great!) study in the sky. What
                                                                      a gas.

{The only vector is red}

Institutions and communities are how you get paid,
      & make friends along the way,
Who will help guide you on this singular journey
      Your immortal path. Occultism is an error,
Painstakingly concealed by flagless wandering
      Factions. In the muddled recesses
      Of an allegory, intuition concaves into monadic
Parity. Summer flowers are birch trees
      In disguise / the leopard print yr crush never wore,
But who somehow modeled it
      In a dream or fantasy, bewitching in its captivity. The
Individual parades forth
Under banners of no sky, tethered sempiternally
      To earth, its sugary & eggy substance
      Mottled presumably by a pseudo-infinity
Of delusion fractalized to such a hypno-
      tically general extent that the regional cartography that
Posits an eggshell memory over the tortuous
      Piscean grappling that blankets the astral ebb of
Originary interiors (in the sense of capsules]
      Of dreams lisping to the analysand a pocket
       Underground no circumspect demystification
Can hold an eggshell to. These carcanets surround us
      Riotously in the folderol transparency
Gifted us by childhood memories. And zey, for
      Most of my colleagues, the book remains un-
opened. The pictures only becoming visible as (a] sign
      Of the times, or worse, as biographical
Emergency waddling its way into the formaldehyde of
Public office, notarizing this & that
      w/ the itinerant stubbornness of a poorly understood
      Movie or comic book. The law remains
Essential, but the fetal convergence bargains into
      No-man’s-land of sheer ungainly mutual aid:
A deterministic sledge like the monotone of great
      Emperors in the frolicking reflection of
Brutalist cosmogonic firmament pointed at yr head
      Like a clam playing the accordion or
      Massacring your bestie at the altar, enswathed in
Columbine & heraldic purple substance

Jeffrey Grunthaner works across writing, art, music, and curation. His book of surrealist-inspired visual poetry, Paracelsus's Trouble With Sundays, was published by Posthuman Magazine (2023), and his poetry pamphlet, Aphid Poems, was published by The Creative Writing Department (2022). His work has received coverage in BOMB, The Brooklyn Rail, Jacket2, Heavy Feather Review, Whitehot Magazine of Contemporary Art, and The Pottsville Republican Herald. He posts stories on IG: @shadowblockedthoo.