Project Type: Volume 9 | Issue 2 | Waging Peace

secrets have an audience

1
while we’re busy romanticizing the softer side of things
well-disguised vibes disregard 

the countless beings made into (numb)ers
favoring an unawakened righteous feeling

through a façade that denies inner reality
nurturing the phallic identity of war

2
she is little bits of earth
scattered bits of belonging 

an appropriation for those who take
feeling nothing is taken because it is paid for

to feed a selfish desire that places her to burn
underneath a halo of fire

creating the compartmentalized
as we stigmatize in the quiet and unitedly reject her

unconscious—while busy chasing false ideals
searching for pretty in politics

as connoisseurs of fixation with introspection
gingered by the allure, continue to devour her shell 

with blades of combative motivation 
that takes no accountability, as we all inadvertently fuck her

3
she reads Hello Universe in old bunny slippers
lives in an agricultural area

sits on the porch reading 
hears a diminutive echo

it is the year of another great pandemic
and other distractions

from the millions starving
for one reason or another

however, much less critical 
than the societal incubator

or the soccer game
as the shadow

in a white van
uses a burner phone

three days, three rooms
a ringing in the ear that means more 

as you look away
from the empty swing swaying

4
a temperamental questioning of the self
remembering it grew past two months

a choice sucked into the symbolic
a static feeling remains

refusing to breed
as it parallels a vision

even if it means killing the unborn seed
to not throw away hope for a child

that is already someone
a twelve-year-old

locked inside a small dark apartment
getting used by an endless stream

____,______,________,__________,
as it pours from your daughter in the arms of your son

5
the majority continue connected to the mask
killing a turkey and then sending a card

with a contented one on it
eating a pig and calling it pork

their teeth pulled out 
as the mother watches them squeal

buying a stuffed bear for the child
while purchasing its bile; they are bred and tortured 

we treat our animals as we treat each other
but this isn’t what we want to hear

most will deny it has meaning—desensitized 
it has feelings

nearby, a widowed Arab mother with eight sons
must reveal herself to strange men 

in a place where she is no longer a wife
there are no brothers, no uncles

no man to claim her
so she removes her hijab to feed her children

inadvertently teaching her sons about their “brothers”
with this allegory, for most is not as it appears

but it’s not our country, not our home
not our irony, so we willfully swallow it

like “meat” ignoring the rape
of another number—an accepted behavior

as we slumber
instead of reaching beyond the pale

6
diagonal, horizontal, vertical

the lines we hide in
the lines we love between

the lines we point from
these lines play us

clogging internal processes
clinging to us as belief 
that keeps us hunting

and hostile regard safe
inside our cumulative womb

trafficking the guns gunning us down
while bound in an addiction town

7
a vignette rotting
a fostered feeling 

a male-centric mainstream
a movie she wishes could be unseen

a floret falling apart
petal lips cascading

as we skate through the details 
infested with dark limbic thoughts 

the egregore overidentifies with form
trapping her in a sea of sharks

disconnecting from impending matters
coded for the untrained eye

lulling inborn wisdom back to sleep
that serves the omniscient streams

bribing the scribe with the felicitous mind 
before the eye traverses the den

to make Laureate’s paper words mean nothing
because she doesn’t know she is, too, prey

as another stately white man 
uses rubbers on a mattress with one thin, dirty sheet

8
we all want to be in an uplifted state
with a God that makes us feel safe and entertained

while we shoot semi-automatics
to kill the seed, we do not call our own

it is part of cancer’s permeative conditioning 
the Dubble Bubble happening around the globe

as we say, “It’s not me, it’s them. It’s there, not here.”
as the lights blink on and off in the small dark apartment in our mind

9
deliberate (u)niverse
we are it pretending to be a _____________

an absent black moon
a carnivore awakening

fromdarknessspringsthelight
          (interpretations of the comforts of [personal] space)

the church / the temple / the sanctuary / the synagogue
the mosque / the pagoda / the gate / the abattoir

(words for the same thing): within

psychological death
          a surrendered state 
                              creates space
                                        deeper than thought
                                                  a sleeping infant in my arms
          the win
                    win
                              even in trauma and sticky situations
                                        gathering the momentum of the tormented and tormentor
                                                  in the house built by metaphor
                                                  aligning consequences with reflections of truth
                    in dimension deeper than possession 
                                        entwined in the silence 
                                                   of secrets that have an audience

Poem ©2022 Adrian Voss
All rights reserved

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Adrian Voss…

…lives with her family in Colorado. She is an artist, teacher, and emerging writer with a few published pieces online and a children’s book. The poem submitted is from a full-length collection entitled, The Small Dark Apartment. The work explores uncomfortable aspects within the silence of the collective mainstream. Adrian strives to bring life elements to the surface to push past deceptive illusions and create more light.

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