A whole slew of poems!

An abandoned car in the middle of a field
leaking oils onto the grass,
dyes the browning leaves black underneath.

Withering and rusting together,
while insects scurry by them—
scurry and swarm and scuttle around them

to keep them company
and sate themselves on oil-stains.

——————————————————————————————————

It's dark here,
but the saltsmell is warm and wet
and winding over the sand.

Here, at night,
the dim light from my phone
colors my face,
and I stand in foaming,
ankle-deep water
talking to you.

I hope my plan has a few more minutes on it.

I hope you have a few more minutes
on yours.

————————————————————————————————

To the Critic I Admire

Does it frustrate you
that no one will remember your name?

Does it worry you like it worries me?

After turnstile grade-factories finish
pumping students
through tangling, text-book ventricles,
you become

a slipshod citation in a piss-poor paper
written at six a.m.

Do you congratulate yourself
on your anonymity?

Or find solace in a student’s misinterpretation
of your hard work?

Lightning in your fingertips,
you stood on heaps of dead giants,
hacking at the monolith
with a two-inch ball-peen hammer.

I bet you thought we'd all stand amazed.

God knows I did.

I hung on your words,
in awe of their bravery,
and let your Times New Roman discourse
drip
onto my eyes—

reverent.

I yearned to be like you:

the twentieth-century, typewriter Sisyphus
shouting on a shelf
in the back of the library.

Shh.

You were like a god
at infinity's doorstep,
handing me the key,

and even I can barely remember

what the **** your name was.

_________________________________________________


I'm tired
of coffee-shop messiahs
telling me what an awful person I am. I'm

tired
of hearing the names of Third World countries
rattled off in slow,
laundry list
monotony—
one
two
three—
so I can tally all the people
who have it worse than me. I'm

even more tired
of that one special case,
whatever special case it is—
pick your country off the wheel
of poverty and join the cause of the hour.

I'm tired of trendy salvation.

Tired of
the official, Oprah Winfrey edition, one-hundred-percent-recycled-material pamphlets
covered in fair-trade coffee stains
being waved two inches from my face

while some girl who's never known hunger
tells me what utter dog**** I am.

She's right about one thing:
I don't know true desolation. But I'm

tired
of cookie-cutter, save-the-whales royalty
who think desolation smells
like the library on a saturday night.

Desolation smells
like a smoldering crater of **** you.

Nice. I like the 'I'm tired...' one the best of the lot although all are terrific. Well done.

Originally Posted by: hunter60Nice. I like the 'I'm tired...' one the best of the lot although all are terrific. Well done.

That's my favorite, too.

I'm on a bit of a poetry kick too, as my writing class demands it of me. Not that I'm complaining, I like it more than writing stories.

Good stuff, chieftain. I've seen the last two before, I'm assuming on the writing forum. I like the cell-phone one best of the other two.