Poetry

“Road and Fury”

On my way to class, I drive through congested arteries of the city.

Although I will likely be late, I am patient and abide by the rules of the road.

I hear honking behind me, but I don’t pay mind because

It is likely designated to a dozen other cars beside me.

But as you race past me honking eyes locked on mine furious, and intense

I stare dumbfounded for a second and I internalize and then reflect your rage.

Pedal to the metal,

Fuck going to class I’m going to follow your ass,

I will follow you until you reach your destination and I will confront you because my rage boils over

My hands grip, my teeth grit, and my mind’s eye pulsates with the image of

your imminent destruction.

 

Meanwhile,

The radio goes over the news highlights:

Hundreds of thousands of Americans are still without critical services in Puerto Rico

Bump-stocks are equated with freedom, and now some policymakers might, might,

Might be open to reforming gun control laws.

The continued onslaught and desolation of the middle east.

The systemic income inequality thick with suffocating racial vines.

The same radio that not too long ago had a person

Argue how the civil war was not about slavery.

But I don’t hear,

I can only hear the sound and the fury in tune with the roar of the engine.

 

Written October 2017. Please see the blog post from 19 October 2017 for details about the poem. 

 

“From The Fridge”

Blackberries

From the fridge, a cold rinse and I am transported

through a river of juicy tart flesh

to a satisfying crunch

I never want to leave.

Wrote this poem as a tweet on 09 JUN 17. This version is from the copy I texted to my brother. I didn’t really think too much about the breaks or arrangement but as I typed it out I guess I always knew where they were. Kind’ve of a tribute to some poems I read this year, “This Is Just To Say” by William Carlos Williams and “Blackberry Eating” by Galway Kinnell.

 

“The Stork”

I once met a great man.

All zipped up and uncomfortable I would deliver a daily digest of information so early in the morning.

He had a great big desk. I never saw what was under those papers and mats he placed on his desk.

I brought him a binder teeming with pages of carefully crafted information.

He would digest it in about

15 minutes. He never asked for anything. I would just bring him information, and he would digest. So big was this binder it could take days to fully read and comprehend everything in it.

In the months I worked for him, I heard him say a handful of words to me.

In other words, although we were in the same room we were impossibly far away.

In other words, the ripples in the water did not faze him one bit.

The ripples were huge title waves crashing in an ocean.

But he was a stork,

He was waiting for the one ripple in the pond that he would eat.

The pond was completely still.

 

Written on 16 April 2013. I’ve been trying to revise it lately, and this is what I’ve gotten stuck on.  I am mainly posting it because I didn’t want to revise it to the point where it was no longer the same poem and because I need to let go of this poem so I can write new better poetry. There’s just something about publishing and letting it go!