Chapbooks

With poems that cut right to the heart of the terribleness and terror of the human condition and a few lighter poems interspersed, poetry serves as a mean of showing that denial, fear, social control, and manipulation are at the heart of death in this world, and that the ones we trust most are often the ones who push us into this apocalyptic web the hardest.

In this apocalyptic poem of birds, gods, and junkies, civilization is torn apart by malicious crows.

This is a chapbook of dark poetry tinged with hope. It explores our toxic relationship to nature in the modern world, fear, death, beauty, inauthenticity, and the human desire for a mother's milk.

Not exactly poetry, but short (one or two pages) pieces of prose that detail a more or less traumatic scenario that actually happened in D.E. Morgan's life. If you want poetry, check out the other chapbooks, but this one details those little or big moments that are stuck in the writer's mind.

This poetry zine is a little light, yet a little heavy. There's some poems on vice, a few on being willing to accept that one doesn't know everything, a couple poems on generations being saturated in violence as entertainment, some on the ultimate fate of the universe, and a desire to not succumb to the alcoholic darkness of much Western culture. Some of the poems are formal, mostly in tanka form, but the majority are free-form.

In this 4pagezine, D.E. Morgan mocks Vladimir Putin for his failures.

This is a poem about four types of drugs in four pages. It does not glorify their use but is not drug war propaganda.

In this zine (4pagezine), D.E. Morgan wrote a poem about how vulgarity swallowed an entire generation's discourse as those in power rolled their eyes.

This is a poem about being overwhelmed by inaction and clutter. A 4pagezine by D.E. Morgan.

In this "four page zine" (4pagezine) D.E. Morgan details his vacations, those short interruptions in suburban life taken by so many in the suburbs, including visits to Devil's Tower, the Golden Gate Bridge, and Japan.

This is "Digital Mountains", a poem D.E. Morgan was challenged to write about the Rocky Mountains. Having been to these mountains only briefly over two decades previously, he elected to instead write a poem about looking at pictures of the Rocky Mountains on his laptop.

This is a four page zine (4pagezine) that explores how society uses hedonism, self-destruction, and especially drug use as a form of social control despite its protestations to the contrary.

A half-size, four-page mini-zine exploring the icy feelings of D.E. Morgan, poet with the joy of winter in his heart. A pyramid presented in four triangles, whatever that may mean.

This is the poetry of a desire for change. It is at once romantic, realistic, determined, and working toward a new world where the insane gods of humans are replaced by reason and desire to spread life throughout the cosmos, this poetry is not so much hopeful as a call for action to save the world. Saving the world is something you might just have to do yourself; it might be up to you, not "other people".

Criticizing the vulgar superstition of the age, this poem explores themes of immortality, of being forgotten, of the evolution of life, and a fleeting illumination in the midst of winter.

This is another lengthy poem that explores the intersections of technology, consumerism, and apocalyptic horror, of sex and death, computers, revolution, and the destruction of civilization. Is it a poem of hopelessness? Not really, it says that after the bloody, horrible apocalypse is over with life will go on, and those who are around to enjoy it will do so if they desire.

Here we explore the beauty and madness of Earth, its people, the desires of the artist, everyone's attempts to live through insanity: through art, intoxication, money, it's a neverending maze of madness on this sphere we call Earth, it's beautiful, and I show how this is so in this lengthy poem.

This is a work that explores new territory, sampling the world for its concept of a deva: a powerful being that is understood differently around the world. A mythos is developed around it, extending beyond the manipulative thralldom of Western angels and demons to assert oneself as a being who gives meaning to life and while appearing as an angel or devil to humans perhaps, does not appear this way to itself as it determines its own fate.

Starting with a probably satirical poem about a sorceress trying to cause mass destruction with unspeakably vile black magic, these poems have a tight rhyme scheme and are designed to assault the reader's metaphysical notions of things: the soul is a death wish, God is a tool of money-worshippers, and the bite of the snake, though venomous, undoes the series of delusions designed to cheat humans out of their lives.

This is a putrid book of narcissism, an exploration of grandiosity, egotism, and the dumpster fire of solipsism struggling to grasp the reality of its own banality. Do we have such narcissism in our midst? Of course; narcissism is fashionable to talk about, since we've all been exhaustively subjected to it, but a penetrating glimpse of it in all its bowel-vacating vacuousness is what we have here.

This is a book of light: of extinguished hellfires, roaring, laughing madness, and molotov cocktails of the soul. No, I will not consign myself to live as the prince of darkness when I can be king. There is regret, though: regret of having lived under the thrall of death-worship for so long. There are scars, but the scars smile.

Strangely, this is the most autobiographical work I have written; it's mad, for sure. But my life has been mad; I have experienced things that I have found are actually quite common: reality seems dream-like. It poisons those who embrace it as a dream, but the dream-like nature of things can't be escaped. It is almost as if I escaped from a dream into reality, only to have the dream converging back on me from all directions, beckoning with a siren song to abandon reality, abandon life. But it's a fantasy; it cannot be done, it is drinking the kool-aid, but one can write about drinking the kool-aid without actually doing so.

A surreal journey through an ominous world ruled by fear and death, the dream-like visions these words attempt to conjure take one through the poisoned subconscious of humanity reacting out of fear of death and denial of love. Nevertheless, there is beauty: demons, for sure, but beautiful demons, worlds of the unconscious remorselessly leaping off of the pages.

Basically an exercise in subconscious associations and surrealism, this series of poems describes impossible situations, absurdities, things that are difficult to imagine and even more difficult to find meaning in. Where they take the mind is unknown, they could be frightening, bereft of order, sometimes a psychological place is conjured that almost makes sense almost to disappear in smoke. Not for those who try to create order where there is none.

Taking full aim at the church, Malediction reveals the virulent hatred of Christians to be based on repressed homosexuality and sadomasochism, reducing the court of god to an obscene orgy, demons tormenting pedophile priests, pastors denouncing homosexuality only to be bathed in homoerotic pleasure by teenage rent boys. Hate consumes a world enslaved by fear, delusion, control, the spark of divinity found in the rejection of all that humans worship and the embracing of chaos. A curse on the priests of darkness, the pederasts of Christ, unleashing a Hell full of humanity's best on a world run by humanity's worst.

Poison. These poems are about poisons, sometimes literal poison, but poisons of the mind. The detritus of a doomed society perpetually poisons itself with drugs and magick, murderers and reprobates destroy lives without remorse, people poison themselves with fear and hope, snake oil and devilry.

This is the death of the former self and the rebirth of a poisonous new tree: venomous, caustic, seething with the raw destruction visited on those who pretend that Eden still exists, the embrace of the heart's desire to reject control of its desire, beckoning humanity to quit destroying itself by worshipping gods that perpetually kill them, to choke the life from the false gods within them and to find their place in the stars. Paradoxically, the gods of death are given the proverbial middle finger, their corpses becoming the fertile seed of an insideous tree that destroys its way through the cosmos. This is madness, this is death, this is the beast that eats itself.

Exploring the dark possibilities of art, I am exasperated by the worship of death around me, horrified by the morbid resignation that humanity worships its own demise. I explore the destructive possibilities of art, and end with an autobiographical poem that explores mental illness and the regrets of having a lost, self-destructive youth in which I lost my mind (perhaps?)

Exploring new ideas, lashing out at a brutal world, examining through a series of poems titled "Yin" the idea of putting women in charge of the affairs of the universe, decrying the treatment of animals, and examining a cold section of hell occupied by a decidedly bored Lucifer, the seeds of rebellion are fully sprouting in this series of poems. New forms are tried, new ideas are explored, and while the rebellion of the mind is not complete, it is beginning to come into full swing.

A first foray into poetry, I tried many different forms, perhaps not having found my true voice as a writer, the poems are still something I'm proud of. I struggled to take the symbols of my Judeo-Christian environment with a desire to formulate them into something I desired to believe in, struggling to breathe in the ocean of stifling, restrictive dogma, complete with its mandatory suffering and thralldom. I spoke of the noise of the universe, and how it was the true music of life, that by desiring to hear order in things we discard the true nature of the universe as we filter it through our standards and dogmas.

The book ends with the evil poem "The Woman With Whom I Destroyed the Universe", which could symbolize the desire for another world, to overcome the world and bring something better into being.