Tag: poetry

Days Gone

Posted on by [email protected]

Editor’s Note: This poem mournfully reflects upon relationships that have ceased to exist.

Days Gone

You’re plagued with nostalgia’s grotesque
Scraps, an alchemizing insurgent.
That banished inner voice
Barks propaganda dressed in velvet.
Dogma pollutes, preaching
“You’ll be together again.”

Rusty scattered nails, hammered
Without permission, in rotting
Myrtle wood. Every now and then
You hear so-and-so is up
To this, and that. Doing well.
Better than.

What should you expect?

Casting spells and chanting
Fails to countermand the gravity
That holds your feet fast.
It’s easier to submit, but man evolved,
Rebellious, to stand against.
Dejection fills empty driveways.
Simple truths are ignored
As decried memories.
Forget swallowing your dose –
Reality is a brick-sized suppository.

A setting sun overlooks a pier and empty boat on a foggy lake.
(Image courtesy of Johannes Plenio via Unsplash)

Concrete

Posted on by [email protected]

Concrete

Smothering with profound prejudice,
Steadfast and solidified.
A weighted blanket
Suffocating open fields,
Splitting, when trees uproot,
But easily merged into
Systemic circulation.

Currents deterred by reinforced foundations;

Armor immune to ashing;

Wind is as it appears–

A constant plague on the souls
Who tread on me…
Outlasting those who march
On me tomorrow.

When the world grays
And all that lived are dust and dry venom,
My slab will lie vigilant.

I endure.

Ego

Posted on by [email protected]

Ego

The profound stature of
This hill I would die on
Disarms me;
Enveloping me with insidious
Melanalcoholic acceptance.
Sleepless nights become
Displaced, impassive sedation.
Monotony shrieks, bellows.

I bear the years behind me.
Ignore the lies I tell–
I feel them all.
Success robs me of peace;
Failure bats at my brain.
Beat it smooth so that
I may bask in the ambience
Of blissful oblivion.

I Love You So Much

Posted on by Jonathan

I Love You So Much

It hurts. It hurts me

To be around you,

Watching Mayflies

Die in each other’s arms

Near the lakeside.

To see you shimmer

Makes me shiver,

As water wets the sun in silver,

Because I cannot imagine

Life without you,

Which hurts more;

The cracks in the car window,

Where rain puddles in the handle…

I have to go,

To let go,

Knowing all I ever wanted

Was to stay.

Vampyr

Posted on by Jonathan

Editor’s Note: This poem is inspired by for-profit healthcare.

Vampyr

Damned immortals,
Congregating in shadowed,
Towering temples of
Sacrilegious declinations;

Unholy meat Grinders
Drain flesh with
Bloodied syringes,
Syphoning tonight’s supper–

None dare yield.

Blood suckers–
Alabaster babes who grew hollow–
A summoning,
Under preordained doom.

Clandestine blood bags,
Meetings conducted in
Morningstar’s heralding grace,
Warning of daylight’s revelations…

Sharpen your stakes,
Adorned in runes and pockmarks,
Spelling their incineration,
Harkening the collapse of parasitic empires.

Time

Posted on by Jonathan

You were mine while it lasted
In body, in sheets, in endless glances.
You were mine in the frozen hours
Of two hearts determined to love
Timelessly,
In the yesterday of today and
The today of tomorrow,
Your silhouette in my mind where you live and relive,
The memory of my mornings.

We are no longer…

We are sand in tides
Playing with moon cycles
So as not to forget the seconds,
The love within watches.

Yes, that is what we are…

Love in life
Without knowing the end,
Because on our bodies
You left a mark
Which forgetting cannot erase.

Where Are You, Mom?

Posted on by Jonathan

I don’t know what I hear–
I think they’re fireworks.
I don’t know what I see.
They look like fireflies in the sky.
I don’t know what we’re celebrating.
I only see people running.

The shooting stars.
I’ve seen them closer than ever, Mom.
I can’t touch them because they explode and disappear
like magic before my eyes.

It all seems like a circus.
I think I’m part of the event too.
I’ve never been to one, but
I thought the animals were different.
No one smiles, they just cry, Mom.

There are no stars,
But the night shines.
There’s no moon,
But the silence is a scream.
There are no people.
Their shadows haunt me…

I’m scared, Mom.

I’m alone.
Searching for your skin in the roots,
Searching for your voice in the bombs,
Searching for your steps among the rubble
Searching for your body among ghosts.

Where are you, Mom?

It’s dark…
The fireworks aren’t over yet.
But the game is, almost, Mom… you won.
The game of hide-and-seek
I don’t want to play anymore.
I don’t want any more bombs and toy guns.

Come out, Mom!

Where are you…?
Come back, Mom.

I call your name and you don’t answer.
I give up, Mom.
Come out,
I don’t want to play anymore.

You won, Mom.
You won….

Road to Dendron

Posted on by Jonathan

A shopping cart,
On its side, curled up,
Sunken in the river;
Lily pads gilded
Its edges, softening
Lines and loops that
Watched a child grow
In the grocery store,
While her father did the best he could;

Swans preen,
Curled up, among
Tulips, crocuses,
While a crone
Smokes cigarettes
Outside the bodega
With glass bottles– 
Green, blue, bountiful
As hyacinth;
The sun kisses her face,
With freckles, laugh lines,
Rouge; she did the best she could.

Migrant

Posted on by Jonathan

Note: A profound thank you to Daniel at DS Productions for his impassioned background music which is featured in the audio recording of this piece.

Our land is on fire, regardless of the soil that sustains us,
Our soul is burning, regardless of the lava that cloaks us;
Our body dances the ballet that embraces us.

We are naked and unprotected bodies,
Like migrants born to conquer
The land of the unknown,
The land of the unheard,
The land of absence.

You and I are migrants,
Migrants like the sin of being.

We are nothing more than displaced bodies that seek, amid prayers,
To silence the hunger, arrogance, and abuse of those
Who inhibit our being.
We are nothing more than souls trying to give substance to the ashes that have Blossomed from our being.

We are nothing else than rejected bodies in a land we did not choose to be,
When our life, lost in the mist, searches for the light
To reach praise of the gods,
Once, our tears went unheard.

Tick, Talk

Posted on by Jonathan

I saw your fingers twitch,
While your phone was in your pocket.
You talked about the news, and that
Artist in Phoenix you keep seeing
Everywhere, now that you are on TikTok;

The clock keeping ticking, as I wait for
You to arrive; I have not seen you much–
I know you cry a lot
When you text me, instead of calling;
We used to talk for hours,
Back at the cabin up in Maine,
The one with red clover out front,
Seafoam shutters– I remember
Watching you, watching the world–

Where did you go?