The Return Sidetrips
By Steve Isaak

(a cap-doff to William S. Burroughs, 1914 – 1997)


Tired whirlwind rider sits,
dazed,
in front of his television,
watches typewriter ticker tape
jerk-roll out
of a beetle’s open carapace.

I should be writing, he thinks,
but decides against it:
doing so would silence
his brain buzzing bees.

Early morning umbrage
lends a Lovecraftian cast
to his walls & chair-locked door,
trapping, protecting:
once snailing hours
jerk-spool faster,
much like his thoughts –

a woman outside his walls
pounds, screams;

Further perplexed, he craves
hypersleep,
wants to dream-write his looping,
hypnopompic logic –
lysergic acid = risible wisdom² –
while showing that whirring black fan
for what it is:
a mechanical bad luck cat,
crouching, circling
like those unspooling ticker tape hours,
apian buzz fading,
dazed, shiny, ugly.


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Steve Isaak, sometimes published under the nom de plume Nikki Isaak and Chuck Lovepoe, is the author of several poetry anthologies. He is the editor of the Reading & Writing By Pub Light site.