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 Sep 2012 P Pax
ryan pemberton
I wanted to write a letter
for this ******* the bus,
but all i had to write on
was a banana.
so I wrote:

"when i saw you,
just now,
you are the most
spectacularly beautiful thing
i've ever seen
just now,
when I saw you."

she ran away.
she didn't touch
my banana.
I left this poem on the bus seat across from her, along with my full name. She has not attempted to contact me.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
I wasn’t supposed to fall so hard
I wasn’t supposed to call out for your arms in the night
And my lips weren’t supposed to search for yours
As if they would actually be there.
I wasn’t supposed to nuzzle into my pillow at night
pretending that your hands were nestled in my hair
I wasn’t supposed to make small talk
just so I could hypnotize myself with that something in your eyes
I wasn’t supposed to wake up cold in the gray morning
with the strong urge to be bruised and bitten
In fits of slow, languid passion.

Unreal how our bodies match and move together,
Uncanny how our minds meld and play in synch.
My youthful love for life,
Your chuckling maturity, still unsure what life is.

Now I play soft ballads full of aching, yearning,
I can wrap myself in a blanket on the floor
With a mug of tea, and think silently on you
And the shadows I wish I could conjure into existence…
They live inside, dancing to burst free from our guilty bodies
Too ethereal, too beautiful, to be abandoned
When we (artists) know we live for such wonders.

I wish I had any other option but forgetting,
or descending into madness.
(I’m currently choosing madness..?)

And it wasn’t supposed to be like this.
I wasn’t supposed to fall so hard.
I’m so sorry,
My summer love.
08/31/12




Written for N, and a cold morning in an empty house up Chumstick Highway.
 Sep 2012 P Pax
Ryan Vollrath
What does one do with a burnt out fire?
The ashes are here, but not desire.
Residual proof of what I once held---
Fleeting:  memories of oaken trees felled.
Brother collectors, whose work is complete
taste it akin to me; something unique:
The fact is collections (like my heart, whole)
have all the components, save for that hole
left by the fury, drive and frustration
Requisite for our very creation.
Second fact is wholesome hearts freed of greed,
Unfettered by love, (the great earthly need!)
Have no direction or key to the map
So listlessly wonder with toe a-tap.
Completed soul, with perfect attention:
buying cars perfected  without engine.
 Sep 2012 P Pax
Pablo Neruda
Drunk as drunk on turpentine
From your open kisses,
Your wet body wedged
Between my wet body and the strake
Of our boat that is made of flowers,
Feasted, we guide it - our fingers
Like tallows adorned with yellow metal -
Over the sky's hot rim,
The day's last breath in our sails.

Pinned by the sun between solstice
And equinox, drowsy and tangled together
We drifted for months and woke
With the bitter taste of land on our lips,
Eyelids all sticky, and we longed for lime
And the sound of a rope
Lowering a bucket down its well. Then,
We came by night to the Fortunate Isles,
And lay like fish
Under the net of our kisses.
 Sep 2012 P Pax
E. E. Cummings
Humanity i love you
because you would rather black the boots of
success than enquire whose soul dangles from his
watch-chain which would be embarrassing for both

parties and because you
unflinchingly applaud all
songs containing the words country home and
mother when sung at the old howard

Humanity i love you because
when you’re hard up you pawn your
intelligence to buy a drink and when
you’re flush pride keeps

you from the pawn shop and
because you are continually committing
nuisances but more
especially in your own house

Humanity i love you because you
are perpetually putting the secret of
life in your pants and forgetting
it’s there and sitting down

on it
and because you are
forever making poems in the lap
of death Humanity

i hate you
 Sep 2012 P Pax
Emily Dickinson
54

If I should die,
And you should live—
And time should gurgle on—
And morn should beam—
And noon should burn—
As it has usual done—
If Birds should build as early
And Bees as bustling go—
One might depart at option
From enterprise below!
’Tis sweet to know that stocks will stand
When we with Daisies lie—
That Commerce will continue—
And Trades as briskly fly—
It makes the parting tranquil
And keeps the soul serene—
That gentlemen so sprightly
Conduct the pleasing scene!
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