Poems

Hello, just wanted to share a few things I’ve written over the last few months. If they’re bad, ignore it, but if they’re good, tell me. I crave validation

Jacob Riis

I was getting on the train and I didn’t even bother to pick up her jacket

I held on for dear life, crushed by hundreds of other middle class pedestrians

As she asked questions in a way she was too young to be asking.

A face made to take notes in a Biology lecture

And a voice made to dwell in the depths of a chainsmoker 

Waiting for time and space and sound to all collide together, smoking one last

Cigarette for the road above.

A man, or a tattooed serpent slithered out of the next car begging for her

My eyes are pointed at my hundred dollar feet and all I can imagine is the sweet scared man’s 

Face covered in blood screaming large intestine small intestine heart brain liver flooding the floor ribs and femurs crushed to dust and ash of a boy or girl once loved, ensnared in the slimy scaly torso of that man, the muscle laid to rest in that man’s beard, on his Glasses, and the black pelt of her companion carpeting the L train floor as her purple leash 

Hangs slack clanging against the rails 

And her bag of dog food she gripped so tightly, scattered too. 

Watchers of any movie only ever care if the dog dies.

But I think the dog and the girl are one.

In this swamp they form a symbiotic relationship with each other and the serpent and 

The sweet scared man are all parts of the same whole all parts in a cycle where girl, dog, snake 

Sink deeper into the murky green waters the unrelenting quicksand of a city and man gets a pat 

On the back and a blowjob when he gets home to his wife and us parasites in blue plastic chairs 

Dressed in our good work clothes suck the blood out of the spectacle throwing stale bread 

Spilling cheap beer seated around a metal colosseum watching the brave gladiator slay the great 

Big lion chanting:

 “More! More! More! 

And I am a mosquito trying to fly through the humidity and starving sucking the body dry 

She’s trailing from the top of the page to the bottom fading 

Away with every letter typed, a giddy pink spark bubbling in my stomach as her words flood my 

Brain it feels tingly and light stealing this story from the hot thick air I seized her from.

And to her she is the day and afternoon and night and each step, each breath, the cold freezing 

Winter she needed that jacket for, the one I ignored, the hot blistering summers she prays 

To see and feel the sweltering unbearable sun one more time and survive one more time how 

Sweet it could be to fly above the clouds the stars the sun feel the crushing vacuum like 

A hug so violent you forget to breathe and you forget to care caught in the gravitational pull of 

The biggest hunk of rock around the cold embrace of the 

Moon and Mars, the patron of your 

Mind lose your breath gliding ‘round the Milky Way when the heart starts beating again and you 

Fall a million miles down through the roof of a hospital the world doming outwards through the 

Pupil and into the bodies and buildings she fled from still a 

soul just hiding under the rails for the dogs to sniff out like a crime scene. 

She is life, death, life.

Redox

It’s kind of like putting an acne patch in one spot of the craggy 

Cliffside, that is my face.

It’s funny how the sun shines for a few

Days and makes me regret the fact I can reproduce.

One too many clouds in the sky and everything comes loose:

Trip to the corner store, walk up the blue road and then, there’s Plastic in your throat! 

Back down blue and try to forget the taste,

And wish I could have come sooner. 

Companionship is in our DNA,

Trillions of molecules tucking each other away.

Little folded up machines make the world go ‘round, make the Blood rush to the appropriate places. 

Exploitation is in our DNA, 

Crushing carbons those sunny days make for us. 

Step outside,

Oxidize.

Go inside,

Reduce to an atom without a name.