"perditus" poems
I don't write as much or
read as much as I did
in between classes and on
busses or under the bed
at three a.m. with light from
those glow-in-the-dark spoons
out of cereal boxes.
I forgot what it's like to
say i love you to family
and friends and they forgot,
too, around the time dad
stopped smoking and we
lost the house to a gambling
addiction -- they don't know
I know.
I missed the class on making
decisions and holding my
ground and learning to love
myself in that way that
the important people love
me.
I wasted time on drugs and
empty wants, promises--
ruined parts of me I see
on bookshelves and in
B flats on sheet music.
I sleep, I dream;
I tread softly, and I steal
the words better suited to
someone else but I missed
the class on expression, too.
Students and bosses and ones I met
for a moment on the street
laugh and it's always at me,
even when it's not; even when I hide in
plain sight, shoulders hunched, head
down, reciting
Yeats or Siken under my breath
like some mantra of
people with bigger, more
painful, beautiful pasts.
Sep 3, 2013
Sep 3, 2013 at 9:16 PM UTC
Intwined in sweat soaked
fev’rish delusion
A rav’nous serpent
coiling illusion
An ouroboros
slurps its slith’ring self
The prism lies fissured
’neath a cracked ice shelf
where flaws like veins branch
blood of dark gods flow
a heaven lost in smoke
nothing good here grows
Atlas underground
sinews straining stiff
auguries of beasts ablaze -
Spare a pity for what if
Apr 22, 2022
Apr 22, 2022 at 11:10 AM UTC