Poem-A-Day: Day 261

Old Man and the Sea of Faces

I’m not usually moved by the kindness of strangers,
because everyone is either a stranger to me,
or stranger than I can perceive them,
so their motives seemed skewed,
and I do my best to eschew their movements,
their attempts to interact with my life.
I find the strangers to be off,
some disavowed concept
that I can’t seem to shake from my memory.
But whatever happens, they’re there,
and they hover around me
like terrible ghosts.
I see their eyes penetrating my callous face,
trying to discover some hidden motive,
but my only motive is ignorance,
so that I may be ignored.
It has worked for years,
until today, when an old man,
a stranger, decided to give me a penny.
He told me that now we’ll both have good luck.

Poem-A-Day: Day 260

Slow Breeze Blows

I saw happiness
fluttering away like a wounded butterfly
piloted against its will.
It was being flown to a boiler,
presumably to be incinerated
deep within the sweaty hells inside,
possibly to emerge from the fires,
burning in agony,
dead and soulless.

I saw happiness
and we locked gazes in passing.
It appeared to be completely genuine
aside from the look of dread,
the knowing certainty that death was there
driving the fate into the metallic clutches
of the biggest shit storm man has ever witnessed.
There would be a mess,
but still nothing to clean.

And as I saw happiness,
I smiled and turned away
knowing that the dead and the soulless
have nothing to prove,
and the metallic structure
that has erected monuments at my feet
is nothing more than the next wave of nothing
that I will knock down
with my passing breeze.

Poem-A-Day: Day 259

Night Photography

Under the sweet smell of night
eyes capture the long draw,
the long measure
of a small arrow of light screaming
in tiny explosions across the sky.
Under the sweaty draw of black,
back-dropping the gray architecture
representing a mind
lost somewhere in the shadows
of night skies silhouetted.
Under the jet black architecture skies
the records are made and kept
in tiny notebooks,
a single page repeating
over, and over, and over, and over.
Under the repetition of kept messages,
the night sky fades from grays to whites
and the memory recedes
somewhere into the annals of time
where it will be remembered tomorrow.

Poem-A-Day: Day 258

Hermetic

Red light beacon beach
And the circling fence of glass
Like some dark island

Poem-A-Day: Day 257

It Burns When I Think

no feeling in the brain
and remaining meandering souls
have left their mark,
some questionable,
albeit indelible mark
that is burned in.

and there is still no feeling
amidst the burning,
the smell is awful;
seared hair and matter,
but it hasn’t mattered much
up until this point.

and there is still no point
to all the meandering spirits,
but they’ve left their mark,
and it has smelled awful
up to this point,
and it feels like it matters.

the brain is feeling the point
of the tortuous burning,
a brain branding smolder
that is red, brooding
and not unlike the sweet call
of hearing for the first time.

Poem-A-Day: Day 256

Life vs. Death

Brass knuckle punch
square in the jaw.

Life can be a prick sometimes.

So I look Life in the eye,
and I say,
“Stay out of my way,
or I’ll fucking kill you.”

Life, condescending as always,
smirks, and gets in my face.

I do the most logical thing,
and I knock Life to the ground
and start punching.
I punch until there’s nothing left,
no flesh,
no bone,
no blood,
only the memory of a shrouded figure,
some piece of shit
dressed in all black
like a debonair mystery of the night.

I beat on the memory until I saw nothing,
nothing but my own hands clapping.

The brass knuckles were my own,
and I’ve been punching at cement for years,
just bloodying my own hands
and breaking my wrists.

Life isn’t the problem.

It has just been an excuse
and a metaphor for death.

Poem-A-Day: Day 255

A Marsh

A green sweaty mess
Of hot dubious moisture
Eroding my soul