Friday, September 22, 2017

Returning to the purple machine and what that could be

The pen has callouses
                    Have you heard?
It's time to clean up the mess that is my lunch
          Bread crumbs and orange peel
laid out like the schmatics of the purple machine
          Only really, I never got to look at it
I liked the sound of the words together.
The fingers are clumsy so the keys speak for themselves.
The future is like a chalkboard
          locked away and darker than the mildewed basements acting as their graves
there are no factories left willing to produce the chalk.
I dress myself every morning with older rags
          waiting for the accumulated sand to fall out
maybe I can gather it and sell
it would be good if it could be melted down for glass.
Like me, I am see-thru without reflection
          folding each smaller piece of paper tighter
unmarked
it makes the trashcan regardless
humorless
leaving the faintest sense of itself
          that's an uneven jest
I'm still thinking about the purple machine and the sand
          I can't even process what's supposed to come next.

Alone on the train.

Alone on the train
Writing my first poem by phone
Feeling uneasy thinking I've missed my stop
Just because I wrote it doesn't make it real
The motion eats at a different corner of the brain
Having two thumbs
The letters between my hands

Wednesday, September 13, 2017

Bus

the hour passed like a bus on a clear day
hauling the lives within it through the street.
I felt its form move across me like yellow pull string destinations
I was reading on a bench parallel to the street
my head down in words.
it was gone before I looked back.
a momentous whoosh as a pocket of heavy air bursting.
it was gone before I looked right.
I was an entire hour older.
it was gone before I even thought to catch it.