truthfront

Tag: poetry

  • coronavirus blues

    Daydreaming in aisle five

    toothpaste and shampoo

    silent sparkling commerce

    air conditioned

    red arrows on scuffed white tile

    a guide in the labyrinth

    whole aisles are wastelands

    handwritten signs: OUT OF STOCK

    no one looks at me

    not masked employees

    shuffling

    ignoring everyone

    afraid

    not shoppers

    some unmasked

    aggressive

    center-of-the-universe

    others kind, warm

    smiling behind masks

    at the absurdity

    a blackbird loops above the bakery

    scouting crumbs

    I’ve been here too long

    they don’t have what I need

     

    back in the car I

    sanitize

    mask down

    never dreamed I’d need

    masks for my family

     

    through deserted streets

    atomic sunlight

    paranoid and guilty

    for what I might now carry

     

  • Library, by Roberto Bolaño

    Wreckage

    Books I buy

    Between the strange rains

    And heat

    Of 1992

    Which I’ve already read

    Or will never read

    Books for my son to read

    Lautaro’s library

    Which will need to resist

    Other rains

    And other scorching heats

    — Therefore, the edict is this:

    Resist, my dear books, 

    Cross thy days like medieval knights

    And care for my son

    In the years to come

     

     

    (From Two Poems For Lautaro Bolaño)

  • The garage

    Processed with VSCO with hb2 preset

     

    Take the staircase

    up

    fluorescent light flashing

    concrete + steel loneliness

    new stains

    past the sleeping man

    with no legs

    up

    out to dark city morning

    cars speed on First Ave

    headlights like lightning

    sporadic pedestrians

    wraiths in fog

    a taxi idles in the alley

    exhaust and headlights

    city of skunk

    I arrive at work

    less human than yesterday

    when I walk out that last time

    on both legs

    singing

    the legless man will be gone

    but not my car

    vessel of freedom

    I speed from the garage

    to reclaim my life

  • the poet sleeps

    NotebackAlways another page to fill; the size and shape of the page is inconsequential. I keep my pen in my hand and my hands on the steering wheel.

    *

    The poet sleeps

    while driving

    during live broadcasts

    the poet dreams

    of the future

    with folded hands

    cigarette dangling

    no one speaks to the poet

    fearing fire in his eyes

    the poet takes note

    as always

    to return to sleep

    deep as abandoned mines

    and dream across

    landscapes of horror and delight.

  • Gunman

    tree

    The gunman’s eyes

    shined like his gun

    bullets of sunlight

    across shadow-expanses

    of night.

    Murder is hot and nameless

    unlike the dead

    who yearn for ground

    like rain

    seeping through history.

    All minds affixed to

    the poet’s

    disappearance

    as if it were a poem

    in a book of poems

    penned by false gods.

  • That sanity be kept (D. Thomas)

    fullsizeoutput_e4d

    That sanity be kept I sit at open windows,

    Regard the sky, make unobtrusive comment on the moon,

    Sit at open windows in my shirt,

    And let the traffic pass, the signals shine,

    The engines run, the brass bands keep in tune,

    For sanity must be preserved.

     

    Thinking of death, I sit and watch the park

    Where children play in all their innocence,

    And matrons, on the littered grass,

    Absorb the daily sun.

     

    The sweet suburban music from a hundred lawns

    Comes softly to my ears. The mowers mow and mow.

     

    I mark the couples walking arm in arm,

    Observe their smiles,

    Sweet invitations and inventions,

    See them lend love illustration

    By gesture and grimace.

    I watch them curiously, detect beneath the laughs

    What stands for grief, a vague bewilderment

    At things not turning right.

     

    I sit at open windows in my shirt,

    Observe, like some Jehovah of the west,

    What passes by, that sanity be kept.

    — Dylan Thomas

     

  • I Will Return (Neruda)

    Snow

    Some other time, man, or woman, traveler,

    later, when I am not alive,

    look here, look for me

    between stone and ocean,

    in the light storming

    through the foam.

    Look here, look for me,

    for here I will return, without saying a thing,

    without voice, without mouth, pure,

    here I will return to the churning

    of the water, of

    its unbroken heart,

    here, I will be discovered and lost:

    here, I will, perhaps, be stone and silence.

    — Pablo Neruda

     

  • Another memory in algorithm

    Processed with VSCO with e2 preset

    I remember the smell of him alive
    sweat and cologne
    hair and a day’s work
    in other words, the opposite of death.
    I remember the smell of death
    that overtook him
    sour and aggressive — singular
    devouring him inside-out.
    Both scents linger
    memories enforce them, time fades them
    years accumulate
    as do fragrances
    but the dead are still dead — shadows
    the living are measured against them.