Dustin Pickering’s poetry embodies a restless search for meaning, truth, and transcendence. His work often reflects a tension between fragility and strength, sorrow and resilience, drawing from both personal and collective experiences. Deeply rooted in symbolism and analogy, his poems are at once intimate and universal, balancing the lyrical with the philosophical. In collections like Salt and Sorrow and Crime of the Extraordinary, he explores the brevity of life, the spiritual hunger of the soul, and the human confrontation with mortality.
Pickering often experiments with form and voice, using brevity as a tool for intensity while also crafting longer meditative passages. His poems oscillate between stark realism and mystical abstraction, giving readers a sense of entering a liminal space where emotion and intellect converge. Critics have described his style as both raw and refined, capable of evoking immediacy while inviting deeper reflection.
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| Dustin Pickering |
As a self-taught poet and thinker, Pickering brings an outsider’s originality to contemporary literature. His verses do not merely ornament language but strive to reveal hidden layers of existence. Ultimately, his poetry is a dialogue with the unknown—an attempt to reconcile human vulnerability with an enduring quest for spiritual light.
Moonsong
Gravity tugs at your cape,and kisses the whispering tumult
my memory is of a beautiful woman
in the lonesome night.
Her thighs straddle the aching dream.
Kiss, kiss
whisper all that dangerous
love has damned us to the in-betweens
God is the animal’s mouth
which must be filled
with the silence of wisdom
language liberty
The Poetry Hearse
I will live dyingpouring my eye’s incense
into liquor of faith—
the jar of alcohol
peering from the window.
her eyes are silenced as witnesses
while I devise the ultimate song.
parallel to my observation
the growing shadow is long.
I am hanging off a branch of night.
Magdalene
I am the noble whore of Christ,
his proposed bride.
I wear flowers on my ears
and smell of holy water.
I give him my angel’s coat,
stained and rustic with dust and blood,
and trust his poor eyes to speak
my love to the world.
Independence Day Poem
Laughter of children in streets without names,places where no god will hide or arouse fear.
The fires in the sky arouse envy and passion,
jealousies sequestered in the assassin's mouth.
When we thrive in freedom, when the world erstwhile fears our majesty,
we know the sounds of clarity and compassion.
Ignorance is death but the hounds of flesh are biting at our innards,
leaving marks of the ghost who embezzled beauty.
How do we continue these works of munificence?
Sounds in the sky as we sing for our supper.
scarlet harlot
“’Whoever is naïve, let him turn in here’”Proverbs 9: 16
you met her on the streets
searching for salvation:
a warning flew in your sleep
to steer from the beholden scythe.
you took a cab to her eyes and lips,
clearing your throat at every hiss of her tail.
when she cried ‘mercy’ you gave her suck.
when she called you names and sang sadly,
you opened your curtains for her loins.
she, though, is more than mere appearance.
allow me to enter this midnight diner
of your deepest wish to tell you who she was.
Breath
“Breath I take and breath I give…”Townes van Zandt
Let them assume the worst they will.
It is part of the practice.
Let them fill their minds with assumption.
In between spaces are the strongest currents—
not warm nor polite,
but what is must be.
Jealous wind will fabricate airs of dream
while we sleep on the primrose.
If I had loved you, they would have known.
Beating the Cosmological Constant
Or, how The Cross is a vector of gratitude.
Christ’s eyes are vectors from the future—His mind surpassing the sacrifice.
His body cancelled all debt,
serving as ransom for our sins.
Thus he arrived from the distant
cosmological plane
where existence already preceded essence.
Why is this man great enough to be god?
His parables are bathed in language of pastoral economics
to describe the human condition, its promise,
and the merits of a life according to the Golden Mean.
This is no Rorschach test of beauty and grace,
muddled hypnosis of the masses of followers.
Jesus knew where he came from and where he would go;
seated at the right hand of the Father,
His position predetermined not by prudence alone,
His mien glowing with the gratitude of humankind,
Christ is resurrected to beat the cosmological constant.
The Useless Eater
"The elderly are useless eaters."Dr. Henry Kissinger
Whose drive equals confession
to murder of said drive?
Whose banal outcry speaks
to the furtive listener?
A ring of atoms is useless energy
pandering to slavery.
A penis is a social construct.
A poem is defiance edged
against beauty.
When we swim upstream
the runners of God
kill our rumors
with tumors sadly placed.
A grievance is a wicked thing.
Your Eyes
Your irises reach out like a baby's fist,
clenching the wise old world as a new fool.
We all strive for some sanctimonious garb,
something to alight our dim brow with meaning.
Your eyes, no artifice, are forbidden words spoken
near the crying child of fear and forgetting.
Our children are holding flowers in the dusky auroras
of time, where your eyes love the graces of my flowing body.
When you look at me with starving lusts and thoughts,
I remember your eyes are clenching fists seeking a golden room.
Raindrop
homage to Afghanistan
spider-eye this luminescent hole.if thoughts are only rigmarole.
fall strike the timpani where tampon-light
floods the beast of meat, this whistling whinny.
drink the flesh where her eyes roll tom,
the beam of worship from church of bomb,
‘ere the only catch is distance,
airdrifter the Magician knows—
His speech juxtaposes poise and actual,
a faith only welcomed by presidential pardon.
The world an egg withdrawing
as yolk falls from shells
like pushed assault rifles in the piffle of promise.
This rape of the polity will not be forgiven.
Afghan eyes, we miss the hope devout.
Your spirit’d slumber knows not the broken.
Taken from the poetry collection The Ophelia Prophecies
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BIO: Dustin Pickering is founder of Transcendent Zero Press. He has contributed writing to Huffington Post, Los Angeles Review, Compulsive Reader, The Statesman (India), Journal of Liberty and International Affairs, The Colorado Review, World Literature Today, Asymptote Journal, and several other publications. He is the author of numerous poetry collections and books including Salt and Sorrow. He placed in the top 100 for the erbacce prize in 2021 and 2023, and was a finalist in Adelaide Literary Journal’s first short fiction contest. He was longlisted for the Rahim Karim World Prize in 2022 and given the honor of Knight of World Peace by the World Institute for Peace that same year. He hosts the popular interview series World Inkers Network on YouTube and co-founded World Inkers Printing and Publishing.
