S Fletcher

S Fletcher Nov 2016

With the Voyager’s wind at our back,
hear me say: HALLELUJAH!
It’s right here—all the love that ever was—
on a pale blue dot, suspended in a sunbeam.
(Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew ya.)
Here. Home. The true and only one.
Half a pixel in a wash of darkened gray.
Dark like the soil of land weeping life.
Dark like grief. Dark like the space between
fires on a cold and a broken night.
Hear me say: HALLELUJAH!
You have soil under your nails, and
a fire in your soul. Carry it steadfast,
and with caution. Honor its burn.
Bow not to a darkness that merely seems strong.
You are stronger. You, plus me. And yours.
And mine. And theirs. And theirs.
(I used to live alone before I knew ya.)
Like fruits and the trees, we cry when clawed.
Our awe. Our agony. Our awakening.
Hear us say: HALLELUJAH!

#hope #activism #carl #trump #sagan

S Fletcher May 2015

On Crashing

“The longing in our faces cannot end until both shores unite, yours and mine…”
-- Virgil Suàrez*

Sky Deck, Promenade
You’ve got me: at anchor, arched back over the deck rail, swimsuit slipped to the side, I’m strolling your shoreline, thinking teeth, tongue and technique. Thinking about the worthy circumstances under which I could allow myself

. . .

to drown here with you.

Observation Deck, Tiki Bar
The making of a luxury cruise ship is always also the making of a vast, well-haunted wreck. The Accident, a promise, not unlike Death’s. This is axiom, accelerated by upper middle class leisure trends and the modern misunderstanding of the word “travel." It's five o'clock somewhere,

. . .

it's a matter of time.

Upper Deck, The Casino
It might not be cool to think about the Accident on a cruise ship. To whisper “Titanic” under the breath on the deck, is like “Macbeth” murmured in the wings. But the wreckage awaits, people! A tidal guarantee:

. . .

we verge always on crashing.

Main Deck, The Spa
Cruise ships make beautiful reefs. Deck chairs calcified by culling. Drowned halls streaked with schools of silvery ****-dressed sorority fishes flashing their empty ghostgirl glares.

. . .

The demise is in the design.

Deck 5, Main Dining Room
A good quick cry in your cabin’s matchbox bathroom, we’ve found, calms the seasickness within. Or, maybe it’s just the gin. So wanders me (engulfed in you) on the shore. Death’s sweet certainty scummy on my tongue, I want to ask you how it tastes,

. . .

we break for air.

Deck 6, Executive Suite Balcony
I map your profile. Or I try. I look for a crag to sweep my lingering thoughts of lifeboats beneath. Why me, anyway? I’m no angelfish. I am nothing (almost.) A spray of white noise in the night’s endless ink. A mouthful of seafoam spat off the stern. I am the lowest of poets with a cruel patchy sunburn,

. . .

I am slurring.

Deck 7, Slightly Smaller Luxury Suite Balcony
A gale catches my blouse in brief breeze-love. An Accident, momentous, sprays me in sea salted understanding—it pools in the kissprints that you left in my sand. Maybe I want me too. Maybe drowning isn't so bad. I let your wake flood the hull,

. . .

and together we swell.

Deck 8, Emergency Exit Stairwell
But the lifeboats linger. The Accident is pending, and from some recess in me, unheard before, the false urgency of the gull’s squawk wails. Within the invention of the ******, lies the invention of the broken ******. Within the invention of the heart, lies

. . .

the invention of poetry.

Deck 9, Economy Cabin 902
The surf beats on, our maps unchanged. I sink into bed alone, abuzz. Men are predictable fishes. The Accident barnacles me over with the stuff of graveyards. I am sorry for pocketing these stones. For thinking that I could walk into the surf, that I could sink with you, with any grace. I take no pride in this ***-soaked wreck, these postcard views ***** in triangle trade residue. A curse, a cruise,

. . .

an all-inclusive escape.

#drowning #travel #shipwreck #vacation #cruise

S Fletcher May 2015

From ashes, we rise

Tear it to shreds,
dip it in paste,
and with a hundred hands
you can mold yesterday's
riot coverage into the
face of something else.

A dragon big and burning—
all fires meet in one belly,
a generation, a heat poised
for more than just another bend
down the same old bone-paved road.

What do we want?!
When do we want it?!

#mayday

S Fletcher Feb 2015

I did not write this poem: Central Park

When you get there, to the frozen apple’s core,
climb the first hill that you see. Tall one,
floored in rock a-glitter, breaching the noon frost
at the center. Horizon’s white-hot gleaming.
It’s quiet here. A flock of somethings and someones has
built these lines together. Not a barn, nor cathedral either.
The beams vibrate squirrel and chickadee. Be.
Be still in the ice, and their voices will come down
to shiver your pen across a new page.

#nyc #centralpark

S Fletcher Feb 2015

I did not write this poem: Penn Station

In the city of hustle and horn, they gather under.
They are the students and the teachers, the movers
and the moved. They are the mothers, the marrow of
this reef concrete. They sustain. On track, on train, kneel
before their black-clad unseen brilliance, cloistered in this tedium,
zipped and snapped up in fleece-lined neoprene like it’s the end.
They alone can stretch and see how it almost always is.
Only those with breath pressed up to the raucous edge
can see the darkness depart for sunrise.

#nyc #subways

S Fletcher Feb 2015

I did not write this poem: Brooklyn

****** city lamps
dreams deferred, dissolved
bloodied and blurred—a mess
of twinkle, small from on high hill.
Brooklyn, heathens still wrapped
in the sacred vestments, bought
from the surplus stores of faith.
Blowing unceremonious smoke
from their windows, they refract
so many distant, hope-stained glints.
Ten thousand single-serve trinities
in every squint run molten. Together,
then apart. Blink one, blink many.
The lamps of the city ***** my eyes.

#nyc #brooklyn

S Fletcher Jan 2015

Congratulations on your artistic rupture!

We slump in mismatched chairs. Two hunches
over shame and a 3am breakfast, I think:
There’s gotta be a reason why art rhymes with ****.
If you want anything to go anywhere with any respectable…affect,
the force of pressure on the inside must exceed that from the outside.

Interrupting this genius, He asks:
How can you eat that crap? It’s so…empty.
He is flipping through his coffeeblack back pocket note rag.
It’s soiled, wrinkled concave with the ever-heaving
stomachfuls of his inky midnight doubt, and I would really
rather not have it at the table while I’m eating.

I am pouring another glorious bowl of Frooty Froot Hoops—******,
store-brand sugarfuel for the lower-middle-income child poet.
He spends another tasteless oatmeal evening
reading essays about how to improve his writing.
Instead of, like, writing to improve his writing.

I ask:
If you took a knife to the edge of your boundary’s boundary—stabbed right into your life-world’s fleshy monad-sac,
glory running ****** down your blade,
As you breached forth into the well-lit unknown,
would it still be courageous, if you emerged from
your warm wet ignorance, and they were all waiting outside with mylar balloons, a banner, and "Congratulations on your Artistic Rupture!”
in blue icing on the cake??

There's still a moment there, right?
Petrified in the sap of thrill, in the momentous-stasis between
The arrow flung and the arrow fallen. A moment of
advancement …a moment of abandon!

(He nods along, but he isn't listening.)

I say:
Newness, originality, (birth), is purely indexical.
It points, and no one notices that all those shiny vegas lights aren't really moving anywhere—It's just utility bills and light-bulb trickery.
They're asking for genesis extended, genesis again and again
and each false gesture points only towards another
incandescent unreachable elsewhere.

(He nods along, still, not listening.)

But there's little monotony in taking a stab!
Even if it's just for them, again, those perennial spectators expecting,
Waiting outside with ***** little pocket notebooks of their own,
crowding the bassinets, ever-eager to begin another “surprise" celebration.

Gulping sweet, sugarpink milk, I say:
I happen to like this crap!
It keeps my knife sharp.

(He nods along, but he isn't listening.)

#art #pressure #rupture