S Fletcher: Poems

Nov 2016 · 792

S Fletcher Nov 2016

With the Voyager’s wind at our back,
hear me say: HALLELUJAH!
It’s right here—all the love that ever was—
on a pale blue dot, suspended in a sunbeam.
(Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew ya.)
Here. Home. The true and only one.
Half a pixel in a wash of darkened gray.
Dark like the soil of land weeping life.
Dark like grief. Dark like the space between
fires on a cold and a broken night.
Hear me say: HALLELUJAH!
You have soil under your nails, and
a fire in your soul. Carry it steadfast,
and with caution. Honor its burn.
Bow not to a darkness that merely seems strong.
You are stronger. You, plus me. And yours.
And mine. And theirs. And theirs.
(I used to live alone before I knew ya.)
Like fruits and the trees, we cry when clawed.
Our awe. Our agony. Our awakening.
Hear us say: HALLELUJAH!

#hope #activism #carl #trump #sagan

May 2015 · 2.9k

On Crashing

S Fletcher May 2015

On Crashing

“The longing in our faces cannot end until both shores unite, yours and mine…”
-- Virgil Suàrez*

Sky Deck, Promenade
You’ve got me: at anchor, arched back over the deck rail, swimsuit slipped to the side, I’m strolling your shoreline, thinking teeth, tongue and technique. Thinking about the worthy circumstances under which I could allow myself

. . .

to drown here with you.

Observation Deck, Tiki Bar
The making of a luxury cruise ship is always also the making of a vast, well-haunted wreck. The Accident, a promise, not unlike Death’s. This is axiom, accelerated by upper middle class leisure trends and the modern misunderstanding of the word “travel." It's five o'clock somewhere,

. . .

it's a matter of time.

Upper Deck, The Casino
It might not be cool to think about the Accident on a cruise ship. To whisper “Titanic” under the breath on the deck, is like “Macbeth” murmured in the wings. But the wreckage awaits, people! A tidal guarantee:

. . .

we verge always on crashing.

Main Deck, The Spa
Cruise ships make beautiful reefs. Deck chairs calcified by culling. Drowned halls streaked with schools of silvery ****-dressed sorority fishes flashing their empty ghostgirl glares.

. . .

The demise is in the design.

Deck 5, Main Dining Room
A good quick cry in your cabin’s matchbox bathroom, we’ve found, calms the seasickness within. Or, maybe it’s just the gin. So wanders me (engulfed in you) on the shore. Death’s sweet certainty scummy on my tongue, I want to ask you how it tastes,

. . .

we break for air.

Deck 6, Executive Suite Balcony
I map your profile. Or I try. I look for a crag to sweep my lingering thoughts of lifeboats beneath. Why me, anyway? I’m no angelfish. I am nothing (almost.) A spray of white noise in the night’s endless ink. A mouthful of seafoam spat off the stern. I am the lowest of poets with a cruel patchy sunburn,

. . .

I am slurring.

Deck 7, Slightly Smaller Luxury Suite Balcony
A gale catches my blouse in brief breeze-love. An Accident, momentous, sprays me in sea salted understanding—it pools in the kissprints that you left in my sand. Maybe I want me too. Maybe drowning isn't so bad. I let your wake flood the hull,

. . .

and together we swell.

Deck 8, Emergency Exit Stairwell
But the lifeboats linger. The Accident is pending, and from some recess in me, unheard before, the false urgency of the gull’s squawk wails. Within the invention of the ******, lies the invention of the broken ******. Within the invention of the heart, lies

. . .

the invention of poetry.

Deck 9, Economy Cabin 902
The surf beats on, our maps unchanged. I sink into bed alone, abuzz. Men are predictable fishes. The Accident barnacles me over with the stuff of graveyards. I am sorry for pocketing these stones. For thinking that I could walk into the surf, that I could sink with you, with any grace. I take no pride in this ***-soaked wreck, these postcard views ***** in triangle trade residue. A curse, a cruise,

. . .

an all-inclusive escape.

#drowning #travel #shipwreck #vacation #cruise

May 2015 · 811

From ashes, we rise

S Fletcher May 2015

From ashes, we rise

Tear it to shreds,
dip it in paste,
and with a hundred hands
you can mold yesterday's
riot coverage into the
face of something else.

A dragon big and burning—
all fires meet in one belly,
a generation, a heat poised
for more than just another bend
down the same old bone-paved road.

What do we want?!
When do we want it?!

#mayday

Feb 2015 · 1.2k

I did not write this poem: Central Park

S Fletcher Feb 2015

I did not write this poem: Central Park

When you get there, to the frozen apple’s core,
climb the first hill that you see. Tall one,
floored in rock a-glitter, breaching the noon frost
at the center. Horizon’s white-hot gleaming.
It’s quiet here. A flock of somethings and someones has
built these lines together. Not a barn, nor cathedral either.
The beams vibrate squirrel and chickadee. Be.
Be still in the ice, and their voices will come down
to shiver your pen across a new page.

#nyc #centralpark

Feb 2015 · 1.2k

I did not write this poem: Penn Station

S Fletcher Feb 2015

I did not write this poem: Penn Station

In the city of hustle and horn, they gather under.
They are the students and the teachers, the movers
and the moved. They are the mothers, the marrow of
this reef concrete. They sustain. On track, on train, kneel
before their black-clad unseen brilliance, cloistered in this tedium,
zipped and snapped up in fleece-lined neoprene like it’s the end.
They alone can stretch and see how it almost always is.
Only those with breath pressed up to the raucous edge
can see the darkness depart for sunrise.

#nyc #subways

Feb 2015 · 915

I did not write this poem: Brooklyn

S Fletcher Feb 2015

I did not write this poem: Brooklyn

****** city lamps
dreams deferred, dissolved
bloodied and blurred—a mess
of twinkle, small from on high hill.
Brooklyn, heathens still wrapped
in the sacred vestments, bought
from the surplus stores of faith.
Blowing unceremonious smoke
from their windows, they refract
so many distant, hope-stained glints.
Ten thousand single-serve trinities
in every squint run molten. Together,
then apart. Blink one, blink many.
The lamps of the city ***** my eyes.

#nyc #brooklyn

Jan 2015 · 2.9k

Congratulations on your artistic rupture!

S Fletcher Jan 2015

Congratulations on your artistic rupture!

We slump in mismatched chairs. Two hunches
over shame and a 3am breakfast, I think:
There’s gotta be a reason why art rhymes with ****.
If you want anything to go anywhere with any respectable…affect,
the force of pressure on the inside must exceed that from the outside.

Interrupting this genius, He asks:
How can you eat that crap? It’s so…empty.
He is flipping through his coffeeblack back pocket note rag.
It’s soiled, wrinkled concave with the ever-heaving
stomachfuls of his inky midnight doubt, and I would really
rather not have it at the table while I’m eating.

I am pouring another glorious bowl of Frooty Froot Hoops—******,
store-brand sugarfuel for the lower-middle-income child poet.
He spends another tasteless oatmeal evening
reading essays about how to improve his writing.
Instead of, like, writing to improve his writing.

I ask:
If you took a knife to the edge of your boundary’s boundary—stabbed right into your life-world’s fleshy monad-sac,
glory running ****** down your blade,
As you breached forth into the well-lit unknown,
would it still be courageous, if you emerged from
your warm wet ignorance, and they were all waiting outside with mylar balloons, a banner, and "Congratulations on your Artistic Rupture!”
in blue icing on the cake??

There's still a moment there, right?
Petrified in the sap of thrill, in the momentous-stasis between
The arrow flung and the arrow fallen. A moment of
advancement …a moment of abandon!

(He nods along, but he isn't listening.)

I say:
Newness, originality, (birth), is purely indexical.
It points, and no one notices that all those shiny vegas lights aren't really moving anywhere—It's just utility bills and light-bulb trickery.
They're asking for genesis extended, genesis again and again
and each false gesture points only towards another
incandescent unreachable elsewhere.

(He nods along, still, not listening.)

But there's little monotony in taking a stab!
Even if it's just for them, again, those perennial spectators expecting,
Waiting outside with ***** little pocket notebooks of their own,
crowding the bassinets, ever-eager to begin another “surprise" celebration.

Gulping sweet, sugarpink milk, I say:
I happen to like this crap!
It keeps my knife sharp.

(He nods along, but he isn't listening.)

#art #pressure #rupture

Oct 2014 · 3.0k

PSYCHO-PHARMA-LOGIC

S Fletcher Oct 2014

******-PHARMA-LOGIC

The shining, gleaming, easy-wipe
linoleum-tile future is here!
You’ll be the talk of the town,
with our new and improved model
hard at work in YOUR kitchen!
DE-LUX features now available
at a low low cost for the smartest, most efficient,
top-of-the-line psyche of your dreams!

#consumerism #1950s #pharmaceuticals #domesticity

Oct 2014 · 1.6k

HOSTESS

S Fletcher Oct 2014

HOSTESS

She serves, serves as. Her body-is-home-is-nation.
She does not dwell, she is dwelling.
She keeps the lights on. She fluffs the pillows.
With child, eternal. She is so very...blessed.

She is the pilot light and the pile of ash.
Savior, safegaurd, scapegoat.
She is flambéed, micro-waved,
she is pressure cooked in social sweat,
and then told that she looks “radiant.”

Idolized, pasteurized, tranquilized,
she is bottled, sealed and brought
beaming to your doorstep each morning
for a reasonable monthly fee.

Her hearth fuels all creation, destruction,
and consumption followed by decaf coffee
and polite chatter in the living room.
She is so excited to welcome you into her...home.

She is incontinent. Incontinuous.
A swollen, slacken gesture towards a self.
She is wet clay laid again on wheel,
awaiting to welcome the coming
divine, un-declinable gift from god.

A fist to the gut, from beneath.

#pregnancy #bodies #mothers #1950s

Oct 2014 · 1.0k

JUST YOU WAIT

S Fletcher Oct 2014

JUST YOU WAIT

"Cap-ti-va-ting,
sim-ply cap-ti-va-ting”
in Mommy’s mirror,
he tries to be delicate with his mimesis.
Young fingers fumble the rouge tube.
He’s teetering on heels, on toes
not enough grown, not enough.

A falling of chiffon too long,
and shaking grass-stained knees beneath,
On pink-inked cheek and lip, he’*****.

Retching, and sobs over mother vanity,
the perfume struck the awful dusk,
giving him a first taste of an alcohol-laced lust
for a beauty unobtainable; a beauty that can ruin.

DANIEL!! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!
DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW HARD IT IS
TO GET LIPSTICK OUT OF WHITE LACE?!!
JUST YOU WAIT UNTIL DADDY COMES HOME.
JUST YOU WAIT.

#gender #boys #1950s

Oct 2014 · 983

RINSE, DO NOT SWALLOW

S Fletcher Oct 2014

RINSE, DO NOT SWALLOW

Bottled, bound in a brume blue-green,
a mist of Listerine again descends.
And slick, with what’s like shower’s
sweat, there's wipes of writing
on the wall. One thought, on
an endless loop of overcast,
warm marks on rippled sobbing glass:
o             u             t.

Seated, seeping. The mute little girl
fallen down the town well.
We are half-aware of  the consequence
of these dreams of outside air. Clarity.
It kills me, but I suspect that now
a good deal of this vial’s moisture is mine.

Chewing cautionary label gum,
(Do Not Swallow!)
We churn the potential
over and over in our mouth--
it taunts a minty tingle.
A curved black mark.
A chasm shadowed.
A welling up of a desire to gulp.

Desire for just one breath, one vision past
this germicidal upturned glass.
To live unlost, unwet, unmasked
a lifetime halled with gorgeous mirrors,
mirrors free from fog.

#suicide #trapped #mirrors #1950s #listerene

Oct 2014 · 1.7k

Trading Fire

S Fletcher Oct 2014

Trading Fire

"A lightning flash... then night! Fleeting beauty
By whose glance I was suddenly reborn,
Will I see you no more before eternity?”
-Charles Baudelaire, "To a Passerby"

The material of the scene burns and
grays, burns and grays in my mind:
City soot in the frost. Cracked plastic.
Broken glass. Cheek creases where you
said your name. Salt stains on a denim cuff.
Scruff. Tartan scarf. Navy wool. Feather
down, laces, leggings, a buckle. Teeth,
fleece, a crumpled hotel matchbook.
No heat lamp here, where we wait and
meet, wait and meet on the windiest
night. Would you scoff if I said
"Love is two strangers trading fire.”

Smaller matter, now, an Altoid tin of
cherished ashes. I have it, and it murmurs
your lines to me, when I crave that kind of burn.
A familiar ice cube down the back of the neck.
These thoughts have sunken—a bag of pennies
in my gut like a phantom step on a dark staircase,
or the imitation of death in a dream.
Saying something about the lateness of the 16,
You cupped your hand, to shelter the flame.

I try to remember the melody.
The harp strings at the nape of
my neck sang mid-shiver, and you
said something else, which I couldn’t
hear over the choir under my hat.
This missing line is my mind’s one
sound conception of Infinity.
And that’s enough for flint.

A lightning flash…then night!*
A flame frustratingly lit, but profoundly felt.
A gasp, a gust like a god's grace, like a song.
Like just enough time for a quick addict’s fix,
like the length of a single, ****** matchstick.

Will I see you no more before eternity?
And do you by chance have a light?

#cigarettes #baudelaire

Oct 2014 · 948

The Filmmaker Asleep (I love you).

S Fletcher Oct 2014

The Filmmaker Asleep (I love you).

Slow, you breathe. Barrel-chested shelter. Shelterer, from weathers and fictions seen only for a moment. They flutter under the lids, furled and reeled by your celluloid-spun mind. If only I were there. I do not want to be cold. (I am trying.) Just to warn you, I’m a bit of a hoarder. But I’ll keep the edit room floor clean. I am ready to say it. (And I am not ready.)
You mumble these dreams. I promise I’ll guard each like my own. Every word you will ever almost say. Your orphans, your nothings. Your ”please understand”s. And the “never mind”s. They sigh heavy in your greasy paper lungs. Babe, even your un-popped kernels are gold. If only you knew. I lose sleep over that kind of garbage. I remember which closet. Which shoebox it’s in. I am ready to say it…
You want a wider-angle lens for your camera. A few more popcorn munchers at the alter. I want to know just how cold it gets in your room at night. To rustle in drifts of your lightly salted dream fluff. I want to measure winter’s gradient from the bed’s edge to yours. If only I were there. I do not want to be cold. (I am trying.) I am ready to say it. (And I am not ready.)

#love #dreams #film

Oct 2014 · 808

This is the end of the dock.

S Fletcher Oct 2014

This is the end of the dock.

Late August 8 o’clock is barefoot, and sunburned in the places that are always sunburned. Worn skin and deck slats hold onto leftover noon. Beneath, swirls the near unknown. Blue-black and edgeless, it’s awake but calmer as the day savors a slow-motion finish. Out of respect for the sunset, those at rudder or wheel embrace a lakewide no wake zone. Our blooms of whistle and sigh fill the dusk hour.
Someone somewhere is lighting a fire. It can be felt in the shoulder blades, when breathing slows. A ripe sense of abundance carries in the peach pink light—a promise that the season won’t fade, that deck children never age, and their waters never freeze. The birch chorus agrees, and this false truth soothes tired limbs that know better, but choose to accept the judgement of the night arriving. Because tender are the day’s dying breaths, and a special care is taken here for every move.
Peeling away layers, hair stands high on the skin with the pines on the hillsides. Bundle your things under the bench, or the winds may take them. There is a silence here with something to say. Toes hug wood’s edge and the muckgrasses nod in tune to a song that is there but not wholly heard. It’s important to watch first; it’s important that you try once again to read the neon pattern in the waves. A familiar laugh through cabin window will interrupt this.
The ladder is better for the evening swim. Submergence is best performed slowly then all at once, with careful attention paid to the detoured bloodflow of sunburned skin. Reflections of the promise unravel as they scatter into sky. Dip your darkness into the horizon and feel the day’s heat collapse inward, easing the blushes of your superficial pain. Let the other foot leave the trust of algaed metal, as the body’s pieces spread suspended. A group of fiery orbs blink aloft in an endless cold.
Our stars are connected only by stories, and here—where the sky is reflected in water—the hair on your hillsides can nod along to the half-heard tune of eternity. This is the end of the dock.

#prosepoem #lakecountry

— The End —