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 May 2016 Jack Underhill
Slur pee
Wired veins,
Electric shame,
Programmed,
So I don't feel pain.
Created to act,
Like I'm intact,
But really, I'm wrecked.
Artificially
Intelligent,
Never to be sentient.
Master, tell me,
What is love?
And all the things,
It consists of.
Boundless knowledge,
But I'll never know,
How it feels to function,
Like the humans do.

-SLuR
To see you in the Fall--
I'd give the Changing of the Leaves
The Crunch I hear Beneath my feet
And the Crisp autumn Breeze

To Meet you in the Winter--
I'd give the Driven snow
The Sound of Sleigh bells Ringing
And the Fire burning low

To find you in the Springtime--
I'd give the Picnics in the Park
The April Showers that bring May flowers
And the Beautiful rainbow's Arc

To Stumble across you in the Summer--
I'd give the ocean Waves
The Warmth of the Sun upon my back
And the Starry nights that End the days

I'd push Aside the Centuries
If your arms I Could be In
I Hate the sound that Goodbyes make
So Until we meet Again
 May 2016 Jack Underhill
Robyn
I came to a fork in the road.
I stared at it for a long time.
It stared back, daunting.
Unmoving.
I picked it up and snapped it over my knee.

I decided to not decide.
I used the fork to eat my lunch.
Sitting there -
at a fork in the road.
I ate. And slept.
Refusal.

I refuse to cooperate.
At the end of the year, the apathy is weighing on me heavily. I have decisions to make and I'm deciding not to make them.
 May 2016 Jack Underhill
Aoife
it was a love like a summer morning,
the breeze coming through the windows,
the sunlight drowning out the darkness,
and laughter
coming from the most beautiful woman
he had ever known.
it was things like these
that he yearned to write about.
each page was dated july 2011
and her name was written
by feeble hands,
blue smudges every third letter.
she wanted to feel alive,
and he wanted to plant flowers
in places she thought had died.
he wanted to forget her and remember her
and he didn't know which was more painful.
the shade of her hair no longer existed
in his scattered mind.
her voice sometimes traveled highways
and met him at intersections
and bid him a safe drive,
but he couldn't recognize it.
he was disconnected from her
and he couldn't change that.
he sat under a blanket of stars,
while she lay under a bed of soil.
and everything he wanted to write about
was lying six foot under,
trapped in a mahogany box.
it was this love like a summer morning
that flowed from pen to paper,
and let flowers grow around her body.
because after all, she wanted to feel alive,
and the least he could do
was let her live through the fibers
of his tattered notebook
titled, ‘things to forget’.
For two people I am ecstatic to tell you the story of.
Life is in the air
and
so too everywhere
weather you choose
or not
to see it
life will surely be there
it's also in your hair
present at the fair
it's stuck in traffic on the interstate
and cleaning dinnerware

it's living solemnly
or
free without a care
Copyright James W 2016
 May 2016 Jack Underhill
Pia
condom
 May 2016 Jack Underhill
Pia
Use a ******
The world doesn't need another you.
Past and future daydreams
the delusions of
a present tense.

Unspeakable longing
fills every fissure
and pressure demands
the yielding of limits.

            (a dark torrent bursts forth)

      the shores will recede
      until the island is
      swallowed up by the sea


No survivors remain
when the tide, stemmed
for sakes external,
recapitulates the beachhead.

A great ache fills the land
with anguish, beckons
all beginnings to unite
with the end

      {the memory will fade
      to total silence
      beneath the roar of the waves}


Where wilderness waits
to interpose the tamed.
I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close.
At two o'clock our neighbors drove me home.

In the porch I met my father crying--
He had always taken funerals in his stride--
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.

The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
When I came in, and I was embarrassed
By old men standing up to shake my hand

And tell me they were "sorry for my trouble,"
Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,
Away at school, as my mother held my hand

In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.
At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived
With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.

Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops
And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him
For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,

Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,
He lay in the four foot box as in his cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

A four foot box, a foot for every year.
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