bobby burns

bobby burns Jun 2013

clarity

i may not imagine a world
where waves curling along the lakeside
are void of truth,
flux, warping of rock
dimensions through shifted occurrence.
flow, continuous, samsara, the cyclical
wheel of becoming
spins ever onward
until five dollars buys a gallon of gas
until everyone is a pedestrian
until six worlds are wearied,
until mythologies collide.

bobby burns Jun 2013

canyons

To sit so happily slouched
around a burning skeleton
of PBR party packs
and revel in the cremation
of our troubles
To properly inter them
wreathed in white sage
and murmur melodies
until they seep into the dirt
To nourish.

bobby burns Jun 2013

sentiment vs. rationality (respectively)

I'm sick of writing
self-righteous sadness
just to drain the abscesses
left putrefying small cavities
that sneaked past my demeanor
so cleverly, so cautiously
Sticky fingers are a hard thing to manage
when everything is crying out to be taken,
i suppose.
I mainly remember K-I-N-K-Y smeared in shisha
on the door of a shed where we would go to get drunk
and listen to the two albums left on my rich kid phone
because it's the only music we had, and silence was just slightly too unbearable.
But ****, I want to stop citing all these ******* sea wolf songs
before i lose the discography to my inner ocean
and have nothing left to sing my sails
away from here.

bobby burns Jun 2013

saturday, june 1, 2013 (iridescence)

I.
black & blue
as the scissor handles
on a hospital desk
outside the x-ray room
where a scared boy
waits for his best friend
to emerge safely

six sickly pink
as the sutures
outlining her kneecap
and the pale
as anesthesia
filling up her irises

II.
black & blue
as the waterfall
  of markings
cascading down
sheer breastbone
to pool in my bellybutton

brown
as the split blue moon
on ice, and darker as
the curls still unable
to rival the vehemence
     of your stare

III.
black & blue
as the smeared ink
of broken contracts
bound to my skin
in sheets

  achromatic
as the morning after
and the murmured reminder
to forget all about it
seeping from your pores,
as tainted honey
from bees beaten
blue & black
into blindness

bobby burns Jun 2013

Ballad of Margo

A live oak, grey suit not moving,
“He’s dead,”
The strings inside him broke.
She loved mysteries so
That she became one.
-
Tonight, darling, to right
Wrongs and wrong rights
with zero dollars and zero cents
and bat mitzvah money.
-
Orlando was pretty well lit,
A LEGO set sunk, a paper town
That’s uglier close up – dementia,
Paper-thin, paper-frail fox-trot
All the way around to slow dance
And finally, “I. Will. Miss. Hanging. Out. With. You.”
-
Highlighting “Song of Myself” opens the door of your mind,
Not poetry, not metaphor, clues the size of my thumbnail
Couldn’t help but smile half straight edges and half ripped
Paper towns, you will come back.
-
If only I walked like I knew how to kiss
Guthrie sang to Whitman as Walt read of doors
And maps of mini-malls leading
To graffiti messages and skipping graduation to drive,
“Though life can ****, it always beats the alternative.”

Found poem from John Green's *Paper Towns*

bobby burns May 2013

it's only a matter of time

my parietal lobe is home to a phoenix
and each time i awaken in thought,
he burns brighter than type II supernovae,
littering vitalizing ash throughout
the entirety of my internal,
over incongruous cobblestones
and grooved floorboards
bearing all the signatures
and singed residue of rebirth.
-
the ashes multiply and collect
filling me gaunt with each muse lost,
and fifty times the sun is just enough
for him to wither into a black hole,
rendering my mind little more
than an event horizon,
and my life little more
than an expression
denoting eventuality.

bobby burns May 2013

suicide is a faux pas so i won't call it that.

-
if i wrote a poem for every time
i felt like checking out indefinitely
i'd have six collections published
and the means to build myself
a cabin in a river valley,
tucked away between
two peaks of the andes
that are as lonely
as the singing/screaming
dual facets of the inner mind.
-
and ironically, i'd use the space
to fill the necessity i ran from
anyways, but --
-