Author: crow

I'm a writer and a dabbler. I live in Southern California.

Poem 20150720b

crow1 Comment

or you know
just strike the match
and watch it all burn

all those piles of paper
all those piles of words

literally
mountains of thoughts
drafts of repeated scenes

my god how many lines labored over
to get a phrase just
so

and then the tumor of a manuscript
it sits
and swells
and pulses like a pseudo-heart
and gathers the kind of
dust that makes the tapping
on of keys a bitterness

like the dregs of coffee

Poem 20150720

crow

with enough practice
he said
not exactly smiling
but not exactly frowning either

with enough practice
you can plant knives
directly in the marrow
of the bones

they’re seeds at first
like most things
tiny and silent but
hungry and determined

their roots crack the bones
they have been planted in
radius, ulna, humerus, tibia,
and especially the femur

and the blades,
the blossoms you see, all grow up
seeking the heart
as if they possess a secret knowledge

all things that
grow from seeds know
where the sun is

Poem 20150718

crow

the clock ticks
erratically
and you wonder
–why won’t the damn thing
keep time
the way it’s supposed to–

one second after another
one minute after the next
not
long stretches where the minute hand
doesn’t move
or jerks suddenly so far ahead
that the hour hand is dragged
along in its wake
or actually
moves backward
an impossible dance step

but never far or
convincingly enough
to change a single letter
in this poem

Poem 20150716

crow

shouldn’t we take the train, you ask

on trains
the country slides by
like frames of film
like an illusion of life
or a series of photographs
or paintings
granular in change
so subtle from one to one
so different from first to last
like the station where you boarded
and
the station where you stepped down
in another place
and another time

sure, i say
and i go to buy the tickets