david badgerow

david badgerow Jan 2012

i am trapped in a neon arcade
where machines bump hum and hiss
i am a red-cheeked blond boy
with blue tiled streetlamps
i've been slapped by my aunt
and the burn of my flesh stinks and rises
to meet the acid gas hovering over the city
adrenalin runs into my armpits from my crying eyes
and i will be lost immobile and dumb unless
the longhaired angels descend from their albatross
and sing to me of kindness
i will rust under thriving tree roots and
be the forgotten target of armies
i will burn on the emerald horizon
floating silent over bright blue cloud-brains

i pinched a woman's *** in an arcade once when i was seven.

david badgerow Dec 2011

a delusional morning

i stand naked on my front lawn
watching the sun fall into the sea
i have a suitcase full of curse words
and a backpack full of bad ideas
there is a breeze that shakes the bearded tree
and grows chill bumps on my shaking flesh
"Rejoice," he says to me,
"for what is lost is reborn."

"I have kept your soul safe, my son,
hidden here in this walnut tree;
the Devil has only your body,
when you are free of him,
return to me."

david badgerow Dec 2011

intolerance

not everyone who holds a pen is a writer.
not everyone who rides a horse is a jockey.
not everyone who clips their toenails is a podiatrist.
not everyone who smokes knows the feeling.
not everyone who chokes is a sadist.
not everyone who lies is an actor.
not everyone who wears a moustache is a communist.
not everyone who smiles is the sunlight.
not everyone who tries is a failure.
not everyone who shouts knows the silence.
not everyone who cries knows depression.
not everyone who laughs gets the joke.
not everyone who speaks is a teacher.
not everyone who hears truly listens.
not everyone who died really lived.

david badgerow Dec 2011

jesus take the wheel

im too tired to drive now
jesus take the wheel
i will sleep for days
curled up in a ball in the backseat
of my own car
im too drunk to drive now
jesus take the wheel
my face is numb from the *******
my teeth are clenched into a smile
life gave me lemons today,
or i found a bag of citric acid
and i squirrelled it away in my eyes
jesus crawled out of a hole in the ground
and i nailed him to his place in the sky
he will bleed onto my palate
and i will be cleansed by
his desperate sweat.

david badgerow Dec 2011

the end.

i am a boy
standing half naked
on a sidewalk, holding a frisbee
breathing all the tiny, electric smells
of the ozone, seeing sunlight gleam on the clouds.

i am a boy
following the flight patterns
of birds into oblivion,
away from things
i once believed were true.

i am a boy
who sleeps through
the night
cuddled in exhaustion,
the fire is dead and black on the ground.

i am a boy
who dreams of
the raw core of heat

i am a boy
a fragile figure
of an idiom shorn of it's reality.

i am trying to think
of something to say
but cannot.

that's all there is?
yes.

are we going to die now?
no.

david badgerow Dec 2011

The Greatest Poem I've Ever Written

Please wait,

I must

smoke a

cigarette first.

Thank You.

david badgerow Dec 2011

(in order to gain) perspective

last night
i slept on the ground
under my house
and used a vaccuum cleaner
as a pillow

i was wearing
roller skates