A Clay of Dust and Blood By Alex S. Johnson

After a phrase in Marcus Aurelius

The vessel broke.

So

What

Of 

It?

Time’s river slips by.

Tears fill the teeming witch’s cauldron.

Years are swallowed

By the obsidian

Jaws of death.

To cling to this body

Is the

tenet of

Heretics.

We flow and pass

Sacred travelers of the

Luminous Shore.

One door opens

We go through as we must

It’s nature

Don’t make such a fuss. 

Alex S. Johnson is a retired English instructor, disability rights activist, author, editor and publisher (Nocturnicorn Books). He is known for his highly unusual poetry style which combines influences from Dada and Surrealism to hip hop, black metal, industrial noise, T.S. Eliot, Walt Whitman and Rimbaud. His books include the acclaimed collection The Death Jazz, Bureau of Dreams, The Doom Hippies and Bizarrely Departed. His work has appeared in such venues as Horror Sleaze Trash, Black Noise, Bizarro Central and Cease, Cows. His upcoming books include The Junk Merchants 2: A Literary Tribute to William S. Burroughs, featuring a roster of luminaries including Poppy Z. Brite, Caitlin Kiernan, John Shirley and the co-founder of the iconic Goth rock band Bauhaus, David J. Haskins. Johnson ilves in Sacramento, California with his family.