JeFF Stumpo is a survivor of psychosis and PTSD, husband to a PhD chemist, and father to an amazing trans child. These poems come from two manuscripts he recently completed. One is a collection of prose poetry representing actual nightmares he's had, as well as the hopes and fears of people he cares about rendered into dreamscapes. The other begins with a place of doubt, cynicism, and heresy and eventually treats all spiritualities as true (still not real, but True) (he supposes treating them all as true is its own sort of heresy, but at least it's a beautiful one).
GOODBYE
the day my antipsychotics kicked in
I started writing an obituary
for the supernatural
no more spectral fingers on the nape of my neck
in dark hallways, no more
perceptions of demons in the corners
of my vision, no more
prayers inevitably unanswered
I was alone at last, in the moment
at last, had outlasted my brain’s bad wiring
I was living
the etymology of goodbye
in real time, how someone had abbreviated or smeared
God be with ye into God be wye into godbye
and eventually filtered the divinity out of leaving altogether
I had arrived
at a truth,
but,
sometimes, in the quiet hours, I confess
I still take the gods out of their toybox
and play with them in a quiet room
and why shouldn’t I?
it was my voice in their plastic mouths all along
RITUALS
[TONIGHT YOU ARE WASCALLY]
[TONIGHT YOU ARE TUSKED]
[TONIGHT YOU ARE CAUGHT IN A STROBE-LIGHT]
[TONIGHT YOU ARE LOOKING AT A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN]
