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what do these hours mean?
How long that bomb has been suspended in mid air
plump with death
patiently ripening nuclear fructose
Another kind of activist
ready to change the world
Disintegrating slogans, signs, skin and bones
No black mask just mass black
delivering hell to us so we can stop working so hard to get there
With thirty two hours remaining to remember
what our planet was like
I see a spring robin circling driveway stains
as hatred looms where summer love should be
dogwood buds bloom and die
tulips rise to wilt
shedding tearful petals to a muddy ground
suddenly appreciating the great leveler
my eyes are dry as I shake my head. What
are you people doing?
Why am I writing poems?
Am I standing here?
There is nothing but nothing on top of nothing else
introducing this suicide kennel
Why am I so stressed about this bomb dropping
out of the asshole underwear of my
coup d'etat regime?
I put on my brave face and walk around appearing apathetic
but I am frightened
into this sabotaging bender
crying in the bath tub because my parental government
has raped me-
My unimportant blood swirling down smaller than insignificant drains
I am prostrated; begging to mean something before your eyes
close
completely to the possibility that we enslave ourselves
I don't want to write a war poem just like I don't
want to write a break up poem
with all the sourness of rebuilding what we've destructed
toppling uncertain markets by quantifying differences
like self destruction for the sake of poetics
because the pain is real-right? This is real, right?
This is real, isn't it? Isn't this real nothing distracting?
So here I am
still begging to be loved
while the bomb is only eighteen hours from impact
questioning more and more the agent to action
while linking proper pronouns to improper clauses
picturing the performance quality of every line
as if this were the only
significant thing left
to my
life
Pathetic really. This writing I do to trick myself into self-importance like accepting a buyout offering fleeting acknowledgments of my existence. This is all a greedy grasp at a world to live where I'll feel less humble. My ego pumps this iron because it is fragile behind bars. When I was seven I knew I wanted to go painlessly in my sleep. I don't want my wife to die first. I only want peace without guns. Law without a master. Death without pain. Pathetic, really.
I go to the bar.
Get good and drunk.
Brush my teeth at noon with eight hours left.
convicted maple leaves twitch
on a grey branch
beneath
the frigid flat sky
perched there exposed,
an abandoned squirrels nest
leers at me with the stone eyes
of medusa's severed head
so entirely joyless is this cold air
that the empty tree swing is not even moved
to sway for the soul of a child
sulking outside the house
of God
All things between
life and death are unhappy.
I cannot help but feel
connection with dead leaf wind
Conviction
and doubt
hang me from a petrified tree
rooted in pitiful moodiness;
my pendulous spirit
an intrinsic display
inside the pitch of this shadow
I will never see the summit of my climb
or have warning of the hangman's trap
baiting my next step
Eric says, "I graduated from University at Albany with a BA. I left NY a year later with a duffle bag and my laptop. Four years later I'm 33 and live in Wilmington, NC. I've published infrequently. Mostly in small presses like Screed in Albany or Butcher Shop Press. I've published online at thundersandwich.com and the now defunct outsiderink.com. I read at Bowery Poetry Club in NYC. That was a good time. Most recently I won a competition at Bottega Art Gallery in Wilmington. I've been writing poems seriously for about thirteen years."