Two Poems
Alms of Ouroboros
Those politics
will eat you for breakfast
and leave the empty plate
smeared with grease
That’s not God in your needle
That’s not love in your message
That’s not virtue in your stained glass
That’s not power in your eyes
I can see you
the same way I
can see straight through myself
just another tail
chasing itself
around the cycle
we have suffered
and survived before
Mounds of dirt
vials of blood
bones and ash
piled atop the earth
Anthills
Molehills
Kingdoms
Fiefdoms
Empires
are all
sooner or later
eventually
kissed by their sacrifices
and smashed
by the hands of time
That’s not gold in your teeth
That’s not love in your mission
That’s not honor in your oilfields
This is not your reaping of wheat
Empty Pages
Poetry followed by philosophy
read on the back porch
as the birds squawk
and the hawks attack
just as it has always been
Perceptions on the surface
may seem temporary and tangible
as they change and shift
with the turning of the seasons
but at the core
all is still
all is silent
all is one
which is to say
all is nothing and everything and neither
I was twenty years old
laying on the couch in the dark
I took a breath
and am thirty-eight
the same book in my hands
the same old story
under the sun
under the clouds
Where did the time go?
Vanished in the space between
there to here, then to now
it was all one point
which is to say
there was no point
except the points
I don’t recall
I’ve forgotten more
than I ever learned
if that’s possible
everything is possible
nothing is possible
every stone has been looked under
every stone remains untouched
or maybe I
just never learned
how to learn
what needed to be learned
to understand the point
that there is no point
I was ten years old
lying in bed in the dark
staring at the void within
terrified of the empty space
I took a breath
and am thirty-eight
there was never a void
there is only a void
The birds know
what the bees know
what the heart knows
what I have never known
what I have always known
that I will never know
that I will never learn
the same book in my hands
the same as it has always been
Scott Thomas Outlar lives and writes in the suburbs outside of Atlanta, Georgia. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. He was a recipient of the 2017 Setu Mag Award for Excellence in the field of literature. Selections of his poetry have been translated into Afrikaans, Albanian, Dutch, Farsi, French, Italian, Kurdish, and Serbian. His sixth collection of poetry, Of Sand and Sugar, was released in 2019 through Cyberwit. Outlar hosts the site 17Numa.com where episodes of his radio podcast, Songs of Selah, can be found.