Laminar Flow

It appeared to be a corridor
in some ulterior office complex,
devoid of any independent furnishings,
what in the business they call 'spartan' design,
numbered doors symmetrically spaced and placed
along each side of the passageway.

And after continuing forward,
through what seemed endless eons,
after passing rooms with numbers
astronomical in size and scope,
numbers so vast they were beyond imagination,
the traveler noticed the numerals resuming a more human scale.

He slowed down to a halt
outside one particular room,
where contrary to being devoid of furnishings,
full-grown trees were sprouting through the floor,
trees so far advanced in age that they were fraught with disease,
dying on each side of the approach to room 225.

And out from an open door,
the only open door in this universe of corridor,
the room vomited a stream of sluggish waste,
coursing something brackish between the trees,
infiltrating the trunks through contact.

And he had to wonder:
if he followed this drugged stream,
would it extend through the room,
only to exit the other side out into the corridor,
this same corridor,
crossing an infinity of other corridors,
eventually arriving where it all began?

Night Gallery

After hours ...
the painting of the dog
relaxed its rendered hide
and began to "breathe"
the chest cavity gently
swelling and deflating
rising and dropping
while in between
the brush-strokes
of the composed wiry hairs
covering the bristled mutt
a painted flea appeared.

Quayside Gallery

From among his paintings
leaning against the Seine seawall,
he reaches elbow-deep
into the open portal
of a chipped, vacant frame,
retrieving some wind fallen apples
casually cached there for his lunch,

shattering a still life.

Bio: Alec B. Kowalczyk is a native of South Troy, New York, a civil engineer by day, with an interest in the mechanics of poetry. His work has been published in Pif Magazine, ChiZine and others, winning a Dark Animus award for poetry.
Snark Publishing released his chapbook "Shadow and Substance."