Alors, Et Toi? is a quarterly magazine of the arts, digitally published on the world wide web.
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Seeing Skulls
by david mclean
i could never see the skulls beneath
the superficial skin, just feel my bones
still in me, always know the garbage
filling my hands and feet with gristle
and nightmares
what i see in others is not the skull
but precise images of eyeballs falling in,
the cheeks and hands first covered
with fungus, fast when the lid shuts,
i can smell them rot always already
beneath their stinking perfumes,
death present in their futile lives,
forever, i can see a corpse i carried
down to the freezer in a hospital
living in them already - his eyes beetles
with no teeth, his nosea hawk's
withered beak, his cruel hands
impotently clutching the smutty
sheets, he was nothing forever -
a corpse is a piece of stringy meat.
and that's what i see in people,
just pointless animals, just coming
nothing, like we live our lives
never being there, like i already am -
just worthless carrion
new poem
as the sun covers this city
with trees and other trivial reasons
for living, i always assume
he shines mainly for the children
as the moon in turn rises
to cover the trees with light
cities and gets quite serious about things
i tend to believe she shines mostly
for me, so i sit and listen
About The Author
David Maclean: has a couple of chapbooks out. One of them is a free download @ Whvandalism.com. The other, in print can be ordered @ www.erbacce-press.com He has a full length poetry collection forthcoming at Whistling Shade Press in June 2008. A second full length collection "laughing at funerals" is due from d/e/a/d/b/e/a/t press this fall. See deadbeatpress.com. He regularly writes poetry and music reviews for Clockwise Cat. There are over 500 poems now in, or forthcoming in, round 225 magazines online and/or in print. Details are at hisblog.