Two Poems

 

Leonard Shelby

 

Actually

I say

We have met

Once before

Your face registers

Discomfort

Dissonance

 

God dammit

Now I feel

Like a creep

 

Why should I suffer

Real guilt

For remembering

Your face?

The sensation of

Your handshake?

For valuing

Your identity?

 

Fuck you

You weren’t even drunk

The first time

Just forget me again

 

I’d rather be

A stranger to you

Forever

Than let you

Dangle me between

Existence

And

Oblivion

 

———————————————————

 

What Remains

 

I held your head in my hands

While your wife

Searched

For the rest of you

Your ears got so cold

So I cupped my hands

Around them

When your wife came back

She was crying

I was crying too

I felt so close to you

I wasn’t ready to let you go

 

1 Poem

Everything You Do

 

Smoking weed with a friend

To go ‘cool hunting’

To climb through electric playgrounds

To explore inventive worlds

 

The cultural artifacts

Of 21^st century abundance

Right at our fingertips

What could be better?

 

But in the kitchen

Stoned

A shattering thought

 

Do you realize

That everything you do

Every action you take

Springs from the fact

That you hate yourself?

 

There was truth in that revelation

I almost went into

A deep and panicked spiral

Of self-loathing thoughts

 

But I calmed myself down

Set the topic aside

For sober reflection

On some dark and lonely

Nighttime walk

On a date to be determined

 

Looking back on it now

From a wiser

If not happier place

I realize I didn’t have

The best college experience

1 Poem + 4 Haiku

Exhumed/Reborn

 

When I die

My sincere wish

Is to be buried

Under a thin layer of soil

In a biodegradable casket

Made of hemp and bamboo

 

My waxen hands will be clasped

Around the seedling of a fruit tree

Nestled in the soil

That rises from my chest

 

My skull will be filled with water

My abdomen with compost

A small lamp will be powered

By the solar panel on my headstone

 

By this arrangement

I can be exhumed/reborn

A little bit each day

Instead of moldering sequestered

In anaerobic darkness

In artificial estrangement

From the circle of life

 

And when I am exhausted

Mangled and broken by roots

Eaten by worms and maggots

Mere dust in the earth

I will stretch my leaves to the sun

And quietly replenish

The oxygen I consumed in life

 

_______________________________________________________________________________________

 

Strangers fall in love

A crime or accomplishment

The distinction blurs

_______________________________

Aging advantage

You get to keep your wisdom

It travels with you

________________________________

What the fuck is this?

This wasn’t part of the deal

I want my money

________________________________

Curiosity

Killed the cat perhaps, but it

Sustained the human

 

Another Two Poems

Just Unfriended Myself

 

I’ve won so many friends

Influenced so many people

Look at them there

In that scrolling array of pixels

See how attractive all of them are

And how happy looking

 

A community founded on vapor

Friendship without effort

Shared purpose is a pipe dream

A shambling patchwork of individuals

That would pull apart

If not for the threads of decorum

 

Connections that transmit both ways

Vicarious expectations and encumbering thoughts

Free me from this web

So I can seek my fortune

 

They won’t even notice you’re gone

These so called friends of yours

Find the people who will risk

Awkwardness and embarrassment

In order to enjoy your company

 

See my menagerie of friends

Smiling there and sorted alphabetically

Projecting their ideal images

See how attractive they are

And how happy they look

 

_______________________________________________

 

Dubstep and Hegemony

 

Another year

Another stupid song

Another dumb dance you refuse to learn

Pop culture reaches new heights of buffoonery

And all you want is cultural justice

To hear that thing you like

Mentioned in the public square

And judged on its abundant merit

 

But when the spotlight falls

Something isn’t right

And you feel a wordless shame

They know how to co-opt anything

 

There’s no way to escape

Grotesque celebrities will crowd

And penetrate your cell walls

Lowest common denominator

Carried foul on the breeze

The headwinds of hegemony never abate

 

You learn to keep quiet

Smile and pretend

Identify your tastes tersely

Or just avoid the question

Silence those howls from the margin

Before they spook your friends

Two More Poems

The Bluest Line

 

Gobs of Burroughs’ protoplasm

made viscous with winter’s numbing cold

molded like putty

placed into seats

and draped with shabby precision

into strikingly pathetic forms

 

See the postures of silent, faceless despair

like a stinking coughing wax museum

rag heaped bundles exuding funereality

until any expression of happiness

becomes wildly inappropriate

 

Yes thank god, this is our stop

Let’s get out

out of this clanking mausoleum

this hospice for societal rounding errors

and into the sweet cold night air

oh to be young and optimistic

to be young and mobile

 

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

When Nature Calls You Ni**er

 

Seeking relief

but instead thrown backwards

by decades

into those bygones

that were thankfully forgotten

 

An obscene reminder

cloaked in casual servitude

another callous tradition

that won’t be easily given up

 

Put a coin in its hand

and use the other arm as a lever

the coin will drop

into the gap

in its fat, red-lipped, grinning mouth

 

No thank you

i’ll dry my hands on my pants

i’m not going to tip you

for making me ashamed of my skin

Two Poems

It will get stranger and stranger

as we become older

and our dear dead friend (St. Matthew)

puffing squinty-eyed on cigarettes

Head thrown back under 40’s

So stoned in photographs

this hometown godhead

is still just a kid

so unsure of himself

And it pains me to admit

that some of us will remain

trapped like him (St. Matthew)

just like kids

so unsure of ourselves

____________________________________________

Sometimes I come back

and feel damned near enlightenment

in the comfort and peace of my parents’ home

Other times I can’t help but see

a bizarre hoarder’s palace

and I feel a sustained disgust

There’s something going on here

a number of things

that I don’t want to think about