WHAT HAPPENS by David McLean

sex is what happens on piles of naked skeletons
stripped of the senseless insensible
flesh,

it is all the terrible under every memory,
the proximate painless
and never parties yet,

like William Burroughs climbing out of a car
so old it is permanently history
and has always been rusty freedom

to dream in, empty boys, suicide
the cruel exigencies of non-being;
what happens is flesh and skeletons,

the banality of good and evil

NIGHT IS LIKE THE DISMAL by David McLean

night is like the dismal that was the dying industrial
and there are animals sleeping in all the absences
their tiny eternity, monsters flourish in the gray men
who are dropping memories like dust on a highway,
dust on one timeless lifetime

and the angry is thriving, it is tiny and inefficient
like a butterfly's wings, like corpses and living things

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David McLean is from Wales but has lived in Sweden since 1987. He lives there with his dog, Oscar, and his computers. In addition to seven chapbooks, McLean is the author of four full-length poetry collections: Cadaver's Dance (Whistling Shade Press, 2008), Pushing Lemmings (Erbacce Press, 2009), Laughing at Funerals (Epic Rites Press, 2010) and Nobody Wants to Go to Heaven But Everyone Wants to Die (Oneiros Books, June 2013). A fifth full length collection Things the Dead Say is coming from Onerios Books early next year. His first novel Henrietta Remembers is due in 2014 from Unlikely Books. Another novel and a sixth full length book are due later. The latest chapbook Shouting at Ghosts is now available from Grey Book Press. More information about McLean can be found at his blog http://mourningabortion.blogspot.com/

INNOCENT EVIL by David McLean

and it is the innocence of evil,
the emptiness of heaven, not just dreams
to make demons happen

there are ancient names that are almost dead
to us, a legion of broken units
wearing dust and nothingness like flags

and banners; innocent like evil is, like forgotten
and despicable things, these dreamless decedents
stinking their raspberry memory under no sun,

nostalgia unraveled, dead children are not even ghosts
left us, demons are not even sleeping, words and worlds
decay and nothing comes undone

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David McLean is from Wales but has lived in Sweden since 1987. He lives there with his dog, Oscar, and his computers. In addition to seven chapbooks, McLean is the author of four full-length poetry collections: Cadaver's Dance (Whistling Shade Press, 2008), Pushing Lemmings (Erbacce Press, 2009), Laughing at Funerals (Epic Rites Press, 2010) and Nobody Wants to Go to Heaven But Everyone Wants to Die (Oneiros Books, June 2013). A fifth full length collection Things the Dead Say is coming from Onerios Books early next year. His first novel Henrietta Remembers is due in 2014 from Unlikely Books. Another novel and a sixth full length book are due later. The latest chapbook Shouting at Ghosts is now available from Grey Book Press. More information about McLean can be found at his blog http://mourningabortion.blogspot.com/

EVERY INCONCEIVABLE MEANING by David McLean

and they gesticulate empty
towards every inconceivable meaning,
a being unrecognizable

like absence indicated
and failing to say something
that manages to mean

a prayer and absurdity;
rat's milk for mother loveless,
a tomb empty forever

with a word in it -
memory will not answer
nothing we miss

#

David McLean is from Wales but has lived in Sweden since 1987. He lives there with his dog, Oscar, and his computers. In addition to seven chapbooks, McLean is the author of four full-length poetry collections: Cadaver's Dance (Whistling Shade Press, 2008), Pushing Lemmings (Erbacce Press, 2009), Laughing at Funerals (Epic Rites Press, 2010) and Nobody Wants to Go to Heaven But Everyone Wants to Die (Oneiros Books, June 2013). A fifth full length collection Things the Dead Say is coming from Onerios Books early next year. His first novel Henrietta Remembers is due in 2014 from Unlikely Books. Another novel and a sixth full length book are due later. The latest chapbook Shouting at Ghosts is now available from Grey Book Press. More information about McLean can be found at his blog http://mourningabortion.blogspot.com/