Sniper’s dream
I dream that I am awake
but we are in our graves
I cannot raise my heart
it being the heaviest thing I have
and I wonder at the gun
a dark little god
Anxious poems
Anxious poems — a collection of the best works on PoemShip.
Bellwether
I could expect to age
or boil over
a compass busy with the north
napping in a riot
having been rescued from the dead
I know no certainty
Geolocation
how is the world
and what and where
these days
gone without going
found and not finding
me in my unbed
Deer park
white deer
the park is troublesome
with the dust of war
Imposter’s syndrome
at a conference my paper
tricks a blind hand into rising
like a tick to see
how simply I bleed
Onionskin
we are worn so clear
impossible papers fasting
alone with a match
Carrion-eater
in the city lately blown up
we fear the never-done raven
how superficial a fisher
without loss or compass
the thing just may get by
Diversion
O rat
the plate sat empty
full of air alone
the little prince this day
proclaimed a war
Mean drunk
sometimes pleased sometimes eased
evening comes by accident
let Scotch haunt
and scour our house
I fell and made my disturbance
beat her down in the cellar
Waking Up Dead
Lost the letter I in a card game
& wake up still a little drunk.
The sky looks like the proverbial world
of hurt, scarred by contrails that fade slowly,
much too slowly.
Laundry flaps on the line, & I can make out
every word: Red. Black.
Blue. The dark wash.
But where is everybody?
This old light bulb is fresh out of ideas,
even bad ones.
This body wants to be thumbed through
like someone’s bedtime reading.
The kind with covers of broken-down leather,
dog-eared pages edged
in ineradicable gilt –
Dissident
this fast city made of lead
is not the only answer
the truth is dangerous
having so many windows
if I escape I will be a thief
and sleep brokenly in the morning
Humbugger
a cold place is my mind
ear of ice
all the din of desire
is ants in a cake
people at their sports
the tin ill morning
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