harry-j-baxter
English
"If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is.” - Charles Bukowski / / I write poetry because I have to. I never wanted poetry, I always wanted to be a novelist - then one day I picked up a pen and pad and poetry fell out of me like torrential downpour. I didn't choose poetry, poetry choose me. I've been at this writing thing exclusively for almost a year and I like to think that I've gotten fairly decent at it. Feel free to message me with questions, ideas, or just to say hey. Just know that you might not like what I have to say. Keep on scribbling guys. -Harry J. Baxter / hbaxter94.com / © All rights reserved to Harry James Baxter.
take me away to a different place
I had never been there before
but it smelled like memories
the sky meeting with the ground
in a haze of heat and dreams
far off from the tilted axis
and the rotations of day and night
music plays but our headphones
aren’t plugged into anything
where we walked and walked
and our shoes never wore
our feet never sore
and the horizon never came to meet us
at the train station
where no train will ever come
we play in between the tracks
throwing stones down the river
to watch them skip
mile after mile after mile
out of sight
texts were notes we drew in the sand
that the wind would never blow over
the clouds blowing low over the model houses
every bench a billow of thick smoke
dancing in still air
on the fringe of night
I had never been to this strange alien place before
but once I arrived,
I never wanted to leave
Jul 19, 2014
Jul 19, 2014 at 2:31 PM UTC
Hey hellopoetry people,
I recently had a poem of mine published in the Ezine: **** Art Let's Dance* which is published through Nostrovia Poetry. I will also have two more poems published in issue #5 which will be live this August. Tell me what you think and give Nostrovia and FALD your support and readership.
http://www.nostroviatowriting.com/issue-004.html
Keep scribbling,
Harry J. Baxter
Jul 19, 2014
Jul 19, 2014 at 2:14 PM UTC
For every single time I stumbled on loose sidewalk brickwork
I have allowed a so what? smile to cross my face
this is no roadmap
flat as the earth was all those years ago
this path is uneven
and littered with fragments of the lives of others
others who at one point may have walked down this same sidewalk
only to stumble on loose brickwork
so what?
and each parked car
that I may have kissed while backing up
has its own life
maybe the owner spends hours in discussion
*how the hell did I get that scratch?
well you are welcome -
so what?*
and just maybe
if you call that number
stenciled and fading in the weathered concrete beneath the bridge
you will have a good time
so what?
the homeless man I saw one morning
taking the cans out of my recycling bin
and putting them in a duffel bag
was once a ten year old boy
who did things that every ten year old boy does
so what?
and maybe every single dumb poem I pen
makes its way into the heart
of just one person
and maybe they just fly upwards
into the atmosphere
where they dissolve into wind
so what?
Jul 19, 2014
Jul 19, 2014 at 2:10 PM UTC
We used to play guns with sticks
and we all knew how to die convincingly
with playing cards in our spokes
we summit hills atop motorcycles
ratatatatatattt
we walked through woods
explorers and pioneers
waiting for dinner or supper or bedtime
when summer was another world entirely
and the stains on our clothes
told stories
and not worries
We would carve sticks into spears
with knives our mothers did not know we had
today we hunt pheasant
we never did catch one
but we made dens deep in the woods
and climbed trees until we didn’t know how to get down
the hay bales stacked four stories high
in the farmer’s field
was a jungle gym
and when the farmer chased us away
in his combine harvester
we were playing Jurassic Park
back when girls were silly, annoying little things
that none of us were quite sure why we liked
and fights were forgotten within the hour
we had better things to laugh at
a marble composition book filled with ****** raps
and graffiti designs
we would take stones and make them into entire planets
but before long
our shadows caught up with us
a stick was just a stick
a bike just a way to beat the heat
and we were all too aware
of the special effects
Jul 19, 2014
Jul 19, 2014 at 1:51 PM UTC
take a walk to air out my skull
the summer on a week long break
no sweat forming on the brow
the cemetery almost empty
on this Saturday Morning
graves, mausoleums, and monuments
as far as the horizon will carry them
all contained by the twisting limbs
of great ancient trees
I am worrying about things
like the rent and the electricity bill
and the milk and sugar
azucar y leche
and how many cigarettes I have been smoking
these men and women
will never be alive again
to worry about such silly things
victims of the civil war
brother against brother
victims of the passing of time
breath against breath
one and all
strolling down riverwalk ave
the old train tracks running along
the spine of the James
always flowing
streaming
as birds dip in and out of the banks
and the shin high grass sways
with the music of pleasant mornings
and see a family
small children running up the grass hills
only to sprint back down at double speed
not a moment spent out of breath
and I think back to that time
when we found a quiet corner
and let the lighter light up a bowl or two
for the dead homies
and how much we laughed when one of us fell
and how much we gasped
when we saw the small tent village
of homeless people living in the wooded outskirts
their clotheslines bare in the gentle breeze
How insane it is
that we should all
walk through this park
the scent of what life promised us
fresh in the air
as we lazily stroll
through a vast field of corpses
immortalized through monumental history
Jul 19, 2014
Jul 19, 2014 at 1:39 PM UTC
Voices lift us higher than any
lifted high in locked bedrooms
voices of angels
steeped in risk
and pure love
I come across silly
or played out
or too strong
a beat up beatnik wannabe
with too many beer stories
of *** drugs and rock ‘n roll
but from an early age
the words of men turned me into
my own depiction of heroes
wounded warriors smiling in vain
despite the spite of the jealous majorities
they cast out fishing lines
and hooked me with hooks
narrative to musical to comedic
limelight and broken bic lighters
and way too much baggage to
take on tour on planes
they connect through the telephone poles
an ethernet port into my ear
I may sometimes come across
as thin as spread butter
but the voices are still all
bubbling up inside of me
Jul 17, 2014
Jul 17, 2014 at 12:25 PM UTC
The roller coasters never used to the scare me
it was always the lines which I feared
waiting and waiting and waiting
allowing my mind the space to run wild
with images of crushed, collapsed, metal
the loops and the speed never scared me
the rickety clank of the old tracks
or the hydraulic rumblings of the new
these things never scared me
it was my own mind which scared me
the certainty with which I knew
that I was never going to wait in another line
ever again
that after this,
all would be like before I was born
the hazy dark silence
of an unconscious mind
But the roller coasters?
I always used to enjoy the roller coasters
Jul 17, 2014
Jul 17, 2014 at 11:10 AM UTC
The bohemian youth are dancing with the moon
with the night
pressed firmly on their backs
the wind of a thousand seas
they tick like clocks until the world is broken
down at their feet
all around them they build up their anthills
only to play God with magnifying glasses
taking the train or bus
to broke or bust
with cackles echoing off the graying apartment walls
blowing out clouds of intoxication
into the night sky
just so they could call it art
they are building pianos out of old photo albums
and listening to all the songs
they have heard a million times
and yet still do not know
taking the missing pieces out of
abandoned cable boxes
and talking on phones of
styrofoam cups and string
waiting for the day to become night
to stop all of the nonsensical
jibber jabber
with ironic t shirts they found on the side of the road
shooting city crows from the air with BB guns
and eating greasy sandwich after greasy sandwich
in the early hours of morning
beer and beer and beer and disappointment
no noble cause of nobility
for the wannabe outlaw to hang on to
no titanic monolith of strictures to rebel against
just a pair of worn out sneakers
and an empty compass
Jul 9, 2014
Jul 9, 2014 at 12:16 PM UTC
The air is clear tonight
I am relaxed
overeager hooligans
are shooting fireworks
into the face of the muggy
night sky
The light summer breeze
smells like her
my head
is swimming with words
the right one always on the tip
of my tongue
the right one always out of reach
a family on the sidewalk
out front of their house
the women fat and weathered
the men unkempt and wiry
small children running around
laughing
and a disabled man sitting in the open door
of a car which blares bluegrass
and I am yet to walk the hills
where does this trail lead?
or better yet,
what does any of this mean?
blah blah blah
yaddah yaddah yaddah
tonight,
none of that matters
Jul 9, 2014
Jul 9, 2014 at 12:07 PM UTC
Take my ashtrays
and throw them in the street
where the ratty, shirtless children play,
sure
go ahead
drop my keys down storm drains
never to be seen again
when the skies all open up
and the rain pours out of them
it will be like you
showering me in your glances
from the other side of the desk
this train has no known destination
and I can’t make out the turns from drops
but I do know that we’ve been off track
for a few miles now
and that this boxcar is dark and dusty
no breathing room to light a fire
no time for the canned food
holy **** I am really lost
China st is closing in all around me
and I could have sworn I’ve seen these houses before
phantoms from some long lost dream
teasing the fringes of my memory
this necklace sitting on my desk
amid the ash and dust and ink and carvings
is my favorite thing I don’t own
my tongue is the frayed leash
which allows my mind to wander
off on infinite miles in every direction
My heart is a drum
sitting in the back corner
of a garage sale
and my words and my cigarettes have a lot in common
because inevitably
I just end up
blowing smoke
Jul 8, 2014
Jul 8, 2014 at 10:47 AM UTC