PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

Cracked, believing in seers.

That I'm the center of the American universe somehow,

Some way.

They were demonstrating against the future as if it were in the past tense.

I was waiting for a tomorrow that wasn't inevitable.

It was all so like me.

And though I heard my name said I hardly buried my face.

And though it meant the land had died I only pointed it out.

I got out of the house today and spent the afternoon eavesdropping and

Making connections in floating conversations.

So and so went to jail.

So and so had his car impounded.

So and so has cancer now...

Forward and onward, you can paint over pieces of this canvas that is my

  life, can't you?

I almost begged this of you.

But instead I quietly stood and left.

You didn't see me blow.

You heard me and afar

In the bowery with the tagged sick.

Someone say it, there's more.

How can life shed such truths and pile them on?

Connect them, past Huxley, to the Doors.

As if dosed and drugged, I'm thinking this thought isn't sacrilegious:

That now will always be a before.

Despite the rumors they haven't retired.

Once in a whle some old thoughts come alive.

But I don't trade souls with you,

You who crown such things as I.

You who found me, here.

Heaven can wait for a second son.  Rather,

I paid for it at the tip of a gun

With songs to dance to for 20 years.

Sometimes they echo and roll down hospital halls

While nurses console mortal fear.

You, reader, have you ever been there?

Don't.

Don't ask how many have vicariously taken me somewhere else.

Bullet and gun.

The gas is on.  Come back, father calls to son.

But those perfect songs are somewhere else,

Hidden and bygone.

Like I said, I heard my name spoken at the center of the gathered

  crowd.

And I heard her say it, too,

As shepherd, figment, even savior and muse:  I refuse.

Quite a game, five card stud.

In Austin, Texas we play it at coffee shops.

Sometimes I turn my bullets clockwise when it's all become too much.

When I find myself pinned, or completely cracked, like today.

When I can't refuse so much.