"jubilate" poems
I watched the water rise. Creeping down the muddy street. As if a divine force was attempting a stealthy act of insurrection. I didn't have the heart to fight it. Had I only known.
I watched Hell's Half Acre silently succumb to the whimsical (however so pleasantly devastating) path of Gaea. Through this empowering incident I felt redemption like I never had before.
I jumped down from the platform of the livestock pen to personally welcome the satisfying force of nature's purification. The water lashed out and grabbed my leg. At that moment my jubilate spirit spoiled to uncontaminated terror. It was not a redemptive Spirit winding its way through the rail tracks but the serpent Lucifer. Had I only known.
And so in the West Bottoms Tavern I found myself under the ***** shoe of The Machine. A wayward phantom rising from our precarious Kansas River. It drifts through the sweet Midwest like the coal black locomotive smoke that paints a suffocating thick haze above the Stockyards.
A welcome slate of provision. A shelter covering us from the racial tension and poverty smothering the outside world. To those in the Bottoms with unruly desires, a saviour. To those at City Hall with loose morals, the messiah.
And it was at 1908, I nervously pulled the covers over my vulnerable body and sealed Satan's foul kiss with a diabolical red scrawl. We skipped hand in hand through the freshly paved streets of our "wide open" town. I always tried my best to look the other way but I knew full well that I travelled with a gang of thieves.
Nonetheless, everyone votes in our town. A brutal party whip keeps the Jackson County Democrats in line and "Charlie the *** prevents any Rabbits from multiplying.
But I've been working from within the belly of a "whale" for years and I fear we've now run out of ocean. Our arranged marriage has robbed my capacity for faithful navigation. I'm seeking a radical divorce from The Beast, the cost has become inconsequential to me.
So I found genuine redemption. Finally. I closed the driver side door to my sedan and walked out to the edge of the bridge. The water below seemed whimsical (and so pleasantly devastating) in nature, much the same as it had 36 years ago. I pinned this note to the window, and with a Ready-Mixed Concrete block tied around my waist I watched the water rise.
Oct 25, 2018
Oct 25, 2018 at 9:47 PM UTC
Such is the sound–
These hearts are a'breakin'.
Snap.
Only I know that crink in my neck–
that sprainin' a'joints grinding 'gainst disks.
I know how the cold creeks do get in October,
sheets and slabs, it's wet in October.
Listen to those frost-ridden reams underfoot!
Snap.
Cold conversing, I said, "A'hush off. . . Now, now. . . smirk'd, yea-sayin' open an ear–"
Listen to that shard, to them shimmerin' sheets of ice underfoot: Snap.
You'd think them finger-snappin's was some jazz! Jam! Jubilate! Just do it again.
I want an iced, ambient encore; chilled to the bone-core, I grab that glarin' a'glistenin' glass.
The median is near the middle, give that shard a shove, I want to hear it again–
Snap.
That's my kick, my wake-me-not whistle borne of creekwater:
That single soundin' o'shatterin' of sharded sheets,
two halves of a once-whole gripped,
glistenin' a glass singin' as it snaps:
*I, ice, do hiss!
Listen: it's in the hiss, man!
And my snaps sound ballistic
when I break, balletic, in two!*
'Twas a hiss indeed.
that ice does as electricity:
O' it does cry when it cracks,
it does fizzle as it fragments,
it does spark as it splits,
it does bend light between bubbles,
it does melt in my midst,
things do get wet in October.
O' it was by the creek that I told her:
"Such is the sound of two hearts a'breakin'–
'Tis only ice underfoot."
Dec 4, 2013
Dec 4, 2013 at 2:13 PM UTC
I didn't jubilate the anniversary
this year. The song is still one
of my favorites, but I've forgotten
your voice singing softly,
only for me to hear in a room
of twenty other kids. It was the happiest
I had ever been; that moment you noticed me
as more than the girl who sat
next to you, and pined for you for two years then,
and nine years after. But I realized
it is not exactly an anniversary
if you don't share it with me.
Jul 25, 2016
Jul 25, 2016 at 11:54 PM UTC
Torn
Torn, shattered, ripped to shreds.
So many unknown feelings fill the youth's head.
Fighting to get back where we once were, all the times we had before.
Torn, shattered, finally looking ahead.
The world is brighter as we look beyond the deathbed.
No worries or anxiety overwhelming the overfed.
Standing on our own, not an ounce of selfishness in the intent.
Dreaming through the night not the day, living in the present, content.
People jubilate to the sound of their own drum.
Finally, jamming out to our own strum.
Oct 14, 2017
Oct 14, 2017 at 12:37 AM UTC