Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Norman Crane Apr 2021
every day is a second chance
as the first is already lost,
every love is a second dance
as the first still plays in your thoughts,
every life: a second glance
at a past at present not worth its cost.
Norman Crane Apr 2021
reach out ye white antler antennae
up to the succulent sky
tree teach me how to always be
growing, spreading finger branches high
teach me roots
teach me the hidden why
of the fruit of not every leaving
is to die, tree
reach out ye white antler antennae
and blossom me into life
Norman Crane Apr 2021
in living we all walk toward the dawn,
through moonless nights,
through cold and touchless mist,
yet sunbirth come: only some shall carry on,
the rest remain,
in pain,
to on departed souls subsist.
Norman Crane Apr 2021
we regurgitate
ideas with which we grew
acid worlds we knew
Norman Crane Apr 2021
i have a time machine
in my head
a perk
of being human
and not yet being dead
called the default mode network
made by evolution
or by god
it tethers me to my self
in space
and engenders a temporal circumvolution
of my present place
in time
mostly the revolution's fine
but
sometimes
while in the past
i think of all my selfs that didn't last
or that never came to be
and feel a sadness
which presently cannot pass
of all the good that could
but isn't me
which the doctors call depression
and i
my own war of the austrian succession
in which the pain
of each ****** campaign
finally resolves in stalemate
of the brain
of memory and—
it's time to take the pills again:
SNRI
which stands for i no longer want to die
for now
for my dmn takes me away
to a future of everything that could still be
all the possibilities
for death for guilt for shame
is it insane
to forecast each day
a rain
of every way
to fail, and in failing stain
the sky which looms across tomorrow
or at least tomorrow as imagined
by the brain
in permanent gloom
or anxiety, the doctor's say
or weak besieged khartoum
the mahdi pounding on the walls
and we huddled starving in the dark
waiting every day for the end, violently
delayed but inevitable anyway, a massacre
of all
bodies laid one upon the other until they form a hill
their shadow paints me cold—
time for another pill:
SNRI
i no longer want to die
my time machine
my i
my perk of being human
of living and of having not yet died
time for another pill:
time travel
makes
me
ill
Norman Crane Apr 2021
existence is naught
but skin between the moments:
wasp alights / wasp stings
Norman Crane Apr 2021
I saw us again in Galway,
And again it felt as if you weren't dead,
You were young,
And I was younger than today,
You had your journalist's notebook and pen,
And so many things to say,
You looked ahead,
I melted away,
Past the crowd of gathering wolves,
Through the cinnamon rain,
To the narrow road winding through the hills,
Like a fleeing possum's tail,
Never still,
A pulsing membrane,
A hospital bed,
A naked, dying flame,
The road you chose to take,
Red with sweet precipitation and pain,
I still remember when you told me you were ill,
I want to die, you said,
What I wouldn't give to know once more your head,
Where your thoughts used to play,
The way your body swayed,
When you saw life's ugliness but refused to look away,
For your spirit I yen,
Faintly remembered by the markings of your pen,
In notebooks in an attic,
Living words floating above dead eyes,
Shrouded by the spice of time,
I desire to wipe it away,
But I'm so terrified of what I might find,
In dreams, I still see your face,
What if in wakefulness, I find an emptiness in its place
Next page