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J C Jun 2023
I expel smoke into the atmosphere
and think of all my ghosts this year.
I fumble the deck in search of fives
but still find the Jester half alive.
I stumble through old alleys
we used to go to, in search of songs.
But I do nothing right but fill valleys
with all of the right wrongs.
I absorb oaked *** into my veins
and felt hot tears in the rain.
All those moments — lost in time
the second you were no longer mine.
Do Ghosts of Spring Fever's Past Dream of Electric Sheep, a.k.a., I'm Not a Smoker

And, hey, Hello Poetry can actually publish poems now. Yay.
J C Jun 2023
I'm not mad I gave you my number.
I'm not mad I tolerated your nonsense.
I'm not mad I asked to watch Elysium with you.
I'm not mad we fell in love.
I'm not mad you helped me look for a flat.
I'm not mad you leaned on my shoulder in the cab.
I'm not mad you swooned me all over.
I'm not mad we fell in love.
I'm not mad we rode my bike to the coast.
I'm not mad we promised to marry there.
I'm not mad we feared the sun set on us.
I'm not mad we fell in love.
I'm not mad our worlds consisted of each other.
I'm not mad our children would have had stupid names.
I'm not mad our bodies were all but untangled.
I'm not mad we fell in love.
I'm not mad you ended it by telephone.
I'm not mad I didn't speak the last time we talked.
I'm not mad our lives won't be the same again.
I'm mad I haven't yet fallen out of love.
October 2015 feels like a lifetime ago.
J C Feb 2019
I don’t believe in the term I love you more.

It’s either you do [love] or you don’t.

We will not be able to quantify or qualify this feeling.

All things are possible when love lives in our hearts.

Impossible dissipates into the ether.

[I think] that’s just me.
  Nov 2018 J C
David Lessard
I used to read your poems
but lately you don't write
you're silent and aloof
you know that isn't right.
You can't close a door once opened
you can't abolish all your dreams
you're a poet of the heart
mustn't fall apart at the seams.
Say what you can in words
they speak the message true
spoken from the heart
the poems will see you through.
A hermit's not your style
a recluse, you are not
never give up writing
of things that you've been taught.
I used to read your poems
I'd read them once again
if you would send them out
(this one's from a poet friend)
  Mar 2018 J C
Allison
It’s been months, love,
and you’re far, and have someone new,
but I’ve been dancing all this time,
in our living room, with you.

Even this Cohen record tires,
of playing this song you loved most,
but I swear I feel your hands in my hair,
and you make a handsome ghost.

And I know that this glow is your tail lights,
but I love how it bathes your skin.
I’ve missed all these meals waiting,
so I’ll have my white dress taken in.

Give me a few hours, to tape my face on,
to my bones, my heart: our plans;
truth is, while you were saying goodbye,
I was memorizing your hands.

I hope you don’t mind living this double life,
because I need just little more time,
and if all I have is your absence,
that’s fine.
J C Jan 2018
I’ve been thinking
about death a lot lately—
or, that is, I think the image
my brain’s been showing me.
The vestiges of the visage
of who I used to be haunt me;
and in the crickets of my slumber,
I couldn’t help but wonder
about death a lot lately.
The quarks and the quasars I inherit
from the big bang of long ago—
elements that form Mercury—
collide back and forth, and
these are pangs that wouldn’t go,
and it has been deathly difficult
meandering out of this hole.
I’ve been lost in myself—thinking
about death lately so droll.
The synapses fire and misfire;
the subsonic trappings bellow
in the cave of my deep below.
These black-and-white films
feel rewired [rewritten annals]
of which I existed since long ago.
I resonate now an unholy see
of white-noise hellos; or:
the slow slipping of my psyche
around death a lot lately.
The string of unforced errors
does all but help me be still;
yet still the terror rises each
time I open my eyes to this
farce that I’ve been waking up to.
Since your “I don't care for you,”
I've never felt so unwanted;
as my heart opened and bruised,
my soul aches for yours dotted
along my arms so they feel whole.
I unravel when you’re in my mind;
in those twilight hours of just us,
for those unmeasured hours,
you were irretrievably mine.
And doubt may blur what we feel,
and walls may [and can] fall,
and in those moments so real—
yes, surreal—
and for those days that we were,
I haven’t thought about
death at
all.
Save yourself—no one else will.
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