SPOTLIGHT SUBMISSIONS - Poetry by Jessie Layfield

I.

Dabbing drugs over dripping drains
for dreaded demonic doldrum drifts
to dirty driveways deemed dangerous
by dictators in dazzling diamonds.
Ashes of aspirations ascend into
average air, abbreviating astute
aches for anything authentic to
abduct abruptly from actuality.
Meaty migraines migrate to mistakes
as mood morphing medications move
into muscles, melting masochistic memories
of men on mushy mattresses in messy motels.
Names above numbers on notepads
newly neglected by narcissistic numbskulls
nabbing nirvana through nymphomaniac nature,
before nurturing neoteric notches on nyatoh.

II.

Salty sundresses seal streets
with shadows sniffing for silk-stocking
spouses to share stoic séances
of slippery shame and sex scandals.
Handsy hopefuls hideaway behind
hollowed hearts as happiness hardens
into half-ass handshakes harnessing
households with holy hand-outs for honor.
Irresponsible imps ignore instruction
from incoherent inventors of infancy.
Idolizing insignificant ideas until
individuality inches away by insult.
Tipsy tables turn trolling trivial, tepid
types with tacky tattoos, trying to
trace times of truth before the tender
tear of time turned to titillating tyranny.

III.

Fazes of fickleness fixate on fatty fatal feelings
of frustration—fermenting forcefully,
fusing fictitious fabrications fondly until freedom
from a functioning faculty frenzies back to fact.
Ugly, unhappiness upgrades from underneath—unreliably
uprooting unique understanding into an unraveling uproar of uneasy
upsets. Unnoticeably—uncertainty unglues from undertaking
as underlying urgency unhinges upon uncontrollable update.
Crippling chaos causes candidacy through cerebrum combat as conquests
for commonplaceness coils, chucking comfort as concern claws
into a creature, crumbling into a cold compress of cowardice
with cutting-edge comments like a cancer, contaminating confidence.
Knitting kindness inside a kennel becomes a knotted knapsack—
Kneading know-how until knowledge becomes knave. Knives
become kissable—kempt like a knockoff karat of kismet,
killing king-sized keenness and keeping the kit from kindling.