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Liam C Calhoun Dec 2015
The Crickets cackle “crisp,”
With an only interruption, being I,
Atop dust, whisper and
Desert highway.
I’d tell you if I were running,
But I’m not quite sure, not yet,
Leaving the Coyote to eat,
Respite, and devoured,
The singing Crickets,
A’howl later,
To deliver answers unimpeded.

I have a faint memory –
A snake’s grip promised, via hand and
Crystal contingency,
“Wiser,” once bestowed, the mystic;
An epic complete, atop 17 years of thunder,
Steel stained crimson,
Street stained whimper
And forever remaining,
“Under-construction.”

Symbolic a more relevant scaffold,
½ bamboo and the other steel, the tower,
Note ‘fore me, it’s only purpose –
Elsewhere, and anonymous,
While I tap my belly to some
Melody we’d once enjoyed;
Maybe something by, “Coltrane,”
Or maybe not; but music we’d both
Recognize and reminisce too.

It’s an awkward alchemy of sorts,
As the Crickets, post-mortem,
Persist if only to chirp, and the Coyote mulls.
When the dust continues to cake.
When the whisper finds newer ears.
When interrupt’s abrupt, erupts,
Pacifies and interrupts again;
My precious distraction –
An amnesia loyal in away from, “then.”
Somewhere beyond, “there,”
And onward, “anew.”
You can only run for so long, and all it takes is one song to bring you right back.
Liam C Calhoun Dec 2015
Severing fingernails, so to, chopped the
toe’s, ate some berries and snuck in a nip
or two. I assert myself, “this drink’s if only
to steal, or seal one last scream,” but,
“decadent’s,” quiet for once; A calm
christened, “collateral,” the parallel plight
and pale ear nigh, if only doors down.

Left to my own devices, I’d imagined
every bad, “thing,” and how they’d
happen; Exact and unlike random
aneurism. So I checked on the plants one
last time. I checked on the only flower,
once again, if only doors down, and one
last time. I abide impatient and remain to
question eternity; This twiddling of thumbs
and silent sliver of sun peeking upon one
and opposing, my alien, “East,” –

I long for my only, “West,” and if only
home, but its love, the other love that locks
my only gate.

And with that I’d lay awake and be, a
guarantee, malcontent, remnant come only
one reminder; A twitch under my right eye
and promised son but days later. So
continued my sequence, my defiance, my
only anything; Come one, “Oh!” and two,
yawped not for Walt, but for me,
“Onward!” awake and in an awkward
avoidance of complacent.

Ensued, were the acts of rebellion, the acts
of life, the acts of desperation in the face of
an already dead incarnation. One day to be
labeled, my suicide, at ends wrought
insurrection and beneath the twin flags,
insomnia added anticipation – Perhaps my
last, should the wolves cull come the hours
next when beds are made, supper’s sooner
cold and once more, the stars are allowed to
sing for someone, for something, else.
*Note - The stars sang for her, she'd eventually sing for me.
Liam C Calhoun Nov 2015
My first car was a Pontiac;
Winding down
County Road 577,
Hand atop wheel,
A boy and his machine,
Letting snow swoop by like
Hyperspace.
I miss those quiet rides.
But dreams dissolve, evolve,
And I’ve another tangent
Upon the tip of my
Tongue –
Something, somewhere,
Somewhen, fitting,

And prior another attempt at sleep.
A play on a "Boards of Canada," song, and only because I remember listening to, "'84 Pontiac Dream," in my '88 while learning lost in more than one way come the weathered county roads of Michigan.
Liam C Calhoun Nov 2015
I’ll do you like your
Eyes
Ask me to,
As relentlessly
As your
Smile’d
Wish, come every our
Encounter.

I’ll do you, like the –
Plastic, porcelain, and
Polymer
Scenery –
Holography and
Hidden drawers,
Once a sin and
Twice a cross.

I’ll do you, as
I’m, and a first,
If only an
“Object.”
I know it, but you don’t.
You love it, but I won’t,
Because you’d only burn,
Come knowing I’m, “taken.”
Do I like it? Do I not like it? It makes me feel relevant. Either way, I'm taken. She'd never know me, because someone already did and that, "someone," was waiting.
Liam C Calhoun Nov 2015
Part I*

It’s hot tonight,
Boiled tonight.
And I’m drunk tonight
So I scatter tonight
As opposed to
Sleeping tonight; so
Alone’d pave my way.
I speak to parchment,
And with dehydrated
Tongue.
So stack the syllables,
So ebb the songs,
And if words could be
Bricks,
I’d end the stares
And disallow
The gentle breeze,
My window;
Not quite frigid yet,
But like her breath
With a hint of ice,
If only enough,
To coerce my hair,
Specifically
The strands on the
Back of my neck.
And so, we’d shiver.

To be continued…
Part of something larger, at least I thought so. You see, a million little schisms eventually become a cataclysm. God took my girl; and maybe it was for the better?
Liam C Calhoun Nov 2015
“Tap,” beckoned the door,
A, “knock,”
And signature I’d never forget –
Cross the “t’s, “dot the “i’s,”
An empty night’s forged check
And liquor paved path to be,
To bed, it’s her, it’s her.

It’s also 3:10 AM,
Better than PM,
Where I’m still awake,
Still at work,
And as always,
Annoyed by the nuisance of
Another.

I don’t say “hi,”
And far from reluctantly,
She grabs a beer,
The only cold one I’ve got,
Frail fingered, cry-stain eyed,
And fresh off the ultimate high,
Love, and again.

She hovers to my room,
A natural,
Where she walks with closed lids
Guided by music that’s
Remnant and
Leaking phantoms
From speakers spiting souls –

And it’s
The song she always played,
And it’s, “ours,”
Once a favorite of mine,
And it’s now if only a melody,
Destroyed by repetition and her
Obsession with “echoes.”

I endure.
I've since moved; last I'd heard, she hadn't.
Liam C Calhoun Nov 2015
Had a dream that
Bob De Niro
And
I
Stole a car.
We cruised the
California
Coastline.
It ended in L.A.
It ended abruptly.
And
Freud
Would have a
Field day.
I’d
Simply smile with
The sunrise.
Didn't want to wake up; thought we'd maybe rob a truck or something.
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