You Need a New Car

Your war-torn car
Has seen the fall
Of Western ways
And all its starstruck crashes.
The braindead flies
And hippies
In the wild
Never fail
To burst
Upon your tainted windshield.
It’s tough out there, sometimes.

It’s seen tired wounded decades,
Presidential sunsets,
And cancers shrugging hard.

You need a car
That muffles
Squealing roadkill,
With natural speed
And engines
Thriving
Under bodies
Of noxious rain.

You need endless
Nowhere highways,
To fill the empty spaces
Lived outside
The dreams of gasoline.

Dark Nights

I saw the moon
on the move
through remains
of debris,
far away from the bruise
of the slowly sinking suburbs.
My coffin is ready,
in my veins
and beneath
my living room floor.

Amid the psychics and the junk,
the sky was too high
to reach with my palms,
and my lungs were too full
of the stale ozone layer.
Nature is
not my friend,
but who is?

I’m an addict
with a restless, daggered pulse.
Give me one last heavy kiss
tonight,
before I fall
into fields
of armies, killing time.

Let’s talk

about magic mushrooms
how circles
pose as squares,
and mirrors
reflect the night
like ice
against skin.

Let’s talk
about the cage
on your island,
as lightning
stabs your tongue,
like claws
reaching out
with a samurai cry.

Let’s talk
about your killing spree
inside the club,
and how you strangled
the troubled crowd
from the eighties
with your acid-drenched curls.

Let’s talk
about tomorrow
and the lost metaphysics
in your UFO mind.  





Tim Frank’s work has been published in Bending Genres, X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, Maudlin House, The Forge Literary Magazine, New World Writing, and elsewhere. He has been nominated for Best Small Fictions and 3x Best of the Net. His debut chapbook is, An Advert Can Be Beautiful in the Right Shade of Death (C22 Press ’24). His sophomore effort is, Delusions to Live By (Alien Buddha Press ’25). 

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