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I am the sun in all it’s colour
Brightly shining from a seed
Turning slowly with the seasons
For spring where I exceed
I make my way across the earth
Unending in my greed
Yellow petal and smiling stem
But still
Just a ****
My name
A name I always thought dull
And inaccurate
Means farmer.
And funny,
Now
How close it sits on my skin,

I suppose I have toiled
Have pushed fingers into earth
Felt the Mother humming
And I hummed back,
Clenched the roots of the world
Into fists and took from them strength
To rise,
Again
And again

And I suppose I have nourished
Been both soil and the crop
And the blood and sweat that birthed it
I have always been growing ,
Something
Someone
I’ve been spinning sunlight
Like thread on a loom
Have always reaped gold ,
I, planter of bountiful harvest
Sower of sweetened fruit
It is always, Me
To nurture

And look ,
How green the fields are
How well the name fits.
 Aug 2017 Jack Smith
Bo Burnham
She waits. How beautifully she waits.
How impossibly lovely she is
with a thing so passive.

With what weight she waits,
making her bus or boyfriend
(or whatever she waits for)
seem like a first brunch with Christ.

She waits regally, in perfect contrast
to the drooling buffoon describing her.
 Aug 2017 Jack Smith
Bo Burnham
I hung myself today. Hanged? Whatever, point is I hanged myself today and I'm still hanging.

I feel fine. Just bored. I keep hoping that someone will come home and cut me down but then I keep remembering that if i knew someone like that I wouldn't be up here. Bit ironic, right? Or is that not ironic? I read somewhere that, like, anything funny is, in some way, ironic. But I don't know if it's funny or not. I don't think my brain owns "funny," you know?

I feel taller. I like that.

I've never been away from my shadow for this long. It had always clung to my feet, parting momentarily for a quick dive into the swimming pool. But never for five hours. I like it. There's three feet of space between my two and the floor.

I wanted something this morning. I may be stuck. But at least I'm three feet closer to it.
I wanted the book to engage a wide variety of tones and feelings – from seriousness to silliness and from elation to melancholy. This particular poem is from the perspective of a man who has just hanged himself. I thought it was interesting to write a poem from the perspective of someone who has just hanged himself and is pretty nonchalant about it. That someone is /not me/, and that’s half the fun of writing – being able to put yourself in foreign situations and see things from others’ perspectives (and to empathize with them). The poem is definitely dark and a little unsettling but the page before this was a poem about flies buzzing around dog poo. The world is full of dark and light and I just wanted the book to reflect that :)
 Aug 2017 Jack Smith
Bo Burnham
I feel strange.
Half light-hearted, half heavy-handed.
You know when you get a song stuck in your head
and you can't get it out?
I hate that.
That's sort of what this feels like.

I feel better.
Less panicked, more confused.
But a good confused.
You know that feeling of warm water
running down your back
when washing your hair?
I love that.
That's sort of what this feels like.

I feel great.
And nothing.
This is just what I needed.
A warm bath and a quick nap.
 Aug 2017 Jack Smith
Bo Burnham
Read this to yourself. Read it silently.
Don't move your lips. Don't make a sound.
Listen to yourself. Listen without hearing anything.
What a wonderfully weird thing, huh?

NOW MAKE THIS PART LOUD!
SCREAM IT IN YOUR MIND!
DROWN EVERYTHING OUT.
Now, hear a whisper. A tiny whisper.

Now, read this next line with your best crochety- old-man voice:
"Hello there, sonny. Does your town have a post office?"
Awesome! Who was that? Whose voice was that?
It sure wasn't yours!

How do you do that?
How?!
Must be magic.
 Aug 2017 Jack Smith
Bo Burnham
Mid-October,
with leaves spilled
like colored pencil shavings ---

the streets dicing our town
into neat, unfair portions ---
and me, eatin' that *****.
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