OK, So Maybe I'm Simply the Worst

Recently, I gave some thought to submitting a few poems to a literary magazine. The deadline was (is) fast approaching, so I spent some time last weekend looking over some old stuff.

I subsequently decided against submitting. You'll see why once (if) you read the below. I've opted to post this one simply because it explores, in part, the same "window reflection" effect I discussed in a recent post.

Interesting to stumble across this old piece and revisit that same fascination, four years removed... even if is does substantiate my online moniker.

Modern Prometheus

Accursed progenitor!... Accursed fornicator! ~Hamm in Samuel Beckett's Endgame

Enter Boy
He slides the paper across the counter-top,
white smile against dark skin, eyes barely visible
over the ledge, his sketchings on one side,
imagined words on the other: shapes, notions, the
letter "A" scrawled like tree limbs with pink
highlighter; four wheels and a box, headlights
like tin cans, a piece of paper with three
perfect words beneath fluorescent waves

Please pray for ...

A page torn from a Sunday program.
Scrap paper
Ancient thoughts, new form
Unsteady hands, learning the
art of reproduction, symmetry, and reason.

Please pray for...

Recycled smiles
purpose
imagination

Hands that stretch into fists
Laughter like a dying wind;
Intelligence, consequence,
and spiritual cul-de-sacs

Watch the boy walk away
Smile stuttering into a sigh

Six feet in twelve years—
Hand dragging charcoals
across the canvas, mother
in tears, dark faces blurred
by excessive contemplation

Veins drawn, the pulsation,
the explosion that comes
with time, the gap between
then and now

that widens

experience a narrow bridge
with no bottom

like legs spread into
the cold horizon

Reflect

In the beginning, all was
dark. And God said let there
be light, and there was light.

Today I flip the switch

watch you come and go,
reflections build in the glass
transparent until the ghosts
approach

closer and closer

my own reflection growing
as you near

my creation,
completion
in a stranger

unseeing anything
but the hills and then
you, with your hands and
your scowls and your grimaces
and your scents: the alcohol, the smoke,
the cologne

the fast food that bleeds into your
clothes

the human mind is a mystery
when we are first created

all is completion
when we are young

but we never stop to consider
any of these things

only the color of the sky and why, mother,
oh why...

you approach, closer and closer,
I see myself as you near
tuck the scrap into my book
and breathe in the smell of you,
nostrils flaring into the corner
of a stale grin

To Sum Up

Please pray for...

One reaches Nirvana by breaking
out of the cycle

Please pray for...

Wellbuturin for anxiety.
Celexa for depression.

(Take both for balance)

Please pray for...

In academia, one opens not a
can of worms but

pandora's box

Please pray for...

And on the first day, the world was a
satisfying yawn of affection

Please pray for...

And on the second, he pleaded with his
god, who rejected him,

Please pray for...

And on the third, a terrible emptiness rose
into the crux of his eyes

Exit Boy

His right hand arches across the canvas.
Beneath the flesh he battles
the monster of his own


creation