Tag: poetry

I wish that would help… like, abracadabra! That’s how you do the [-] problem! Gee, thanks.

Central Campus Transit Center, 9:00AM, 10/18/2024

i am seven and the dust bunnies morph into a creature under the mattress, tickling my ankles and stealing my socks. i am fifteen and i learn the taste of love from from a dog abandoned on the roadside. i am thirty and you speak to me in whispers, your voice like tendrils, bending cartilage, bypassing cochlea. i am sixty and the conscience is subdued, the voice tragic. the magic, left to rot with the monster under the bed.

I’m sick of looking at screens! I mean, that’s what you’ve been doing all day… my eyes feel like I just wanna take them out, wash them in the sink, and push them back in.

Chem Building, 4:30PM, 11/14/2024

at some point the force of habit kicks in and your mind checks out. this is the death of a life, this drudgery. routine makes the mind numb, the soul weak. a counterclaim against optimism: if the rest of the journey is forgotten, you have converted your adventure into a chore. one foot in front of the other, nothing more than a machine. my fingers beg for rest, one letter scribed, one letter typed. this hope hovers above all of us, a claw half-grasped, holding us in place. step out of bounds, slip up, and you will be crushed–the claw does not care, it suffers from the force of habit as well…

They’re in the nice heat of their car, we’re in the cold. They can wait!

Central Campus Transit Center, 9:00PM, 11/14/2024

a beam of sunlight washes down the flank of the mountain, a bear in hibernation. some days the snow recedes and exposes the conspiracy of survival: the weeds that bloom false flowers, the dandelions that slither between sidewalk slabs. concrete yields to tree roots, roads forked like lightning and runways cracked like eggshells. an apocalypse, a tragedy, a return of equilibrium. the gardens have long degraded, but the soil is still slick with sorrow: a name mother nature remembers, but a face she forgets.

He didn’t go to jail, they put him in a cage. Solitary confinement, for two years!

Mujo Café Duderstadt, 10:00AM, 11/20/2024

you come out a shell, you understand that? i didn’t believe it, i grew up alone and confident, but it was a confidence bred to impress others. you spend your whole life stealing from the spotlight, taking attention by force, and it gets you in trouble, you know… you’re running from the law, from the past, and you’re running from yourself–that’s the worst part. they don’t care about your body, they care about your mind. the most important weapon. they take it, and they turn it on itself. a captain that sinks with the ship, a noble death at your hands. and you only have yourself to blame.

That’s one of my theories, that King Tut’s tomb was an elaborate theory. Cuz it makes perfect sense! It was discovered in the age of circuses and freak shows and fake artifacts—oh, this is the one perfectly preserved tomb?

Digger’s, 3:30PM, 11/29/2024

but curiosity got the better of you, didn’t it? you bring it up quickly, too casually, in a way that implies you’ve been thinking about it all day. it’s never left your mind, i know it and you know i know it. why dance around the campfire after it has burned to ash? a stutter-step, a dewdrop on a leaf, a bomb disguised as a blessing. my tongue hovers on the edge of detonation–so this is how rooftops become tombstones–as the granite slides open. the hieroglyphs twitch, awakened from slumber.

It’s my lucky Hot Wheels car, see… I can fidget, play with the wheels when I get stressed.

Angell Hall, 6:00PM, 12/3/2024

ready. where there are no riddles i am met with rhymes: a fifty-meter sprint, a poetic dash, an impossible distance to cross. set. the eye of the needle shimmers: a twinkle, a rumor, a tumor lying in wait. what’s the magic word? the engine squeals and the rubber drags its nails across the asphalt and the wall becomes ceiling. is it true that people don’t remember words, they remember feelings? a face, a mouth, a scream, the word go. a single moment crystallized, heat-shocked and left to rot. a neural pathway, brittle and dehydrated, ready to snap at the thought of you.

We should just become English and get double-decker buses.

Pierpont Commons, 11:30AM, 11/8/2024

there is a screech of sweaty palm on stainless steel. the paint is stripped away in degrees, each sheet plastered to a different person. to think that we grabbed the same railing, turned the same key, held our own hands in the absence of the other’s. i was young and i did not realize you were young too. the paint, strong and dazzling, untouched. the pain, flaring, like a static discharge through the heart. the same hands, once cupped and overflowing, are now scrabbling at the coffin–but from which side? bury me alive, if it means you will never see me dead.

This is a really weird Sunday. I feel like everybody who was already gonna be somewhere has already left.

Trader Joe’s, 12:30PM, 11/24/2024

you are stuck somewhere in a space without dimension, a page without definition. your hair trembles. if i blink, you wave, your wrist flapping back and forth, your smile stretched between ears. an apparition, childish at heart, perhaps the worst way to suffer eternity. scream! please scream! the soul never matures; it knows the mortality of the body cannot compensate for the factors of luck, the four-sixteen-sixtyfour-leaf clover tattooed on your back. you are stuck somewhere, going but not gone, and i am stuck with you, suffering in silence, praising the deity that granted passage.

the devil’s dichotomy: an underworld, or a world without you.

Thanksgiving! It’s about the food and the family. I’ve told you, it’s like Christmas without the capitalism!

Glen/Catherine Inbound, 9:30PM, 10/8/2024

it is hard to write fiction and recognize the elements of truth that are sewn into the words, baked into the structure, digested in conscience and spit out as thought. of course i am thankful, but to speak it aloud would shatter the reality, a stake driven into the timeline. the only way to speak is to write, to draw parallels, to squint at the stars and see a bear. we are a kaleidoscope of butterflies, each of our successes driven by the updraft of our companion’s wings. i thank the earth for spinning so that i may see the sun split the horizon every day. i thank the moon for shining so that i may read and cry and dream without judgement.

i thank you, dear reader, for listening so that i may share a slice of this fruitful life with those who enjoy it.