Stephen Mead

A resident of NY, Stephen Mead is a published artist, writer, maker of short-collage films and sound-collage downloads. His latest P.O.D. amazon release is an art-text hybrid, “According to the Order of Nature (We too are Cosmos Made)”, a work which takes to task the words which have been used against LGBT folks from time immemorial. In 2014 he began a webpage to gather links of his poetry being published in such zines as Great Works, Unlikely Stories, Quill & Parchment, etc., in a site called Poetry on the Line.

Hold You Up

This is the film, & it’s stuck:
funny footage slipping till laughter
wears thin & what is obvious
is struggle.
This could work in reverse.
This could be someone with an almost sprained
ankle wearing high heels while carrying
a breaking bag of groceries & shouldering
the slurry-song load of another person
who’s had enough.
More than.  More than.
This could be us, giddiness gone over,
flying down.
This could be the planet:
crashing stock market, boiled out melting
pot, back slide of tides, flying off top soil,
chemical crops for camp workers told to pick
or else…
Else what?
Yell at the land for having a drought.
Spit in the river for being polluted.
Curse the animal who ran in front of the car.
Curse the car for running out of gas.
Curse the gas for being a fossil.
Bury the fossil.
Lie about the extinct.
Make it good copy.
Lie about the food chain heading that way:
accidental warheads, accidents, timely.
This could work in reverse.
Give no false hopes, all fables, cautionary.
Some government says: stick ’em up.
Stick it out.  Find a way.  This is the film
falling from the track, lurching back on.
This strange funny train at the speed of light,
at molasses junction, may be alright yet may be…
This, a long day’s journey, this, one helluva night.
We are on the screen.  I hold you.  You hold me.
We are inside.  Darling, stick with me.

Darling, stand by.

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