Am meisten gelesen ▸
Dave Bonta
i lug my silence into a blue forest
its lost cloud
loud with jays jeering
at my blue hat
what makes it so high
and lonesome on the map
baptised from below
in the water table
enabling the spirit to speak
in broken oak—
no hoax this glossolalia
a cross-worded puzzle
muzzling all green thoughts
leaf by leaf
grief needs no bait to bite
no hook to hold
the same moon
in everyone’s phone
fireflies
Ah my oddment, my life sentence,
my spool. How you noodle
and unrevel me when you get
out of hand! The butterflies
in my stomach must be searching
for their missing mouthparts.
(Let them eat ache.)
The insecurity screeners
at the airport made me prove
I could turn you on, but in the plane
they lied and told me
you would mess with their instruments.
Everyone disapproves of us.
They hate our freedoms but love
how trackable we’ve become:
one set of footprints,
It is nearly a year since he died;
I have forgotten the date though.
Nearly twenty years senior to me
Though time isn't really a measure for anything.
Time hardly tells you the strength of the bond -
Why, one's siblings are very often the most distant.
Friendship takes seed - hardly does it need a moment
And it grows like Jack's beans, entwining the hearts into one.
He was a quiet person - a painter, photographer
He drew funny cartoons too, though
Looking at his tall, tired frame and wispy beard
You would take him for a philosopher.
In the early evenings, I would call on him-
Sitting on the verandah we would talk -
About murals and the passing of ways of life.
He would tell me about the old town
it's always about poor, pitiful you.
you always have problems heavier than the weight of the world.
you tell me your troubles,
big and small,
like i'm the one supposed to stop them.
and if i don't?
you won't pick up the phone
just to see how i'm doing
or to stop my emotions from killing me slowly.
because there's no point in love
if they aren't giving you something.
i woke up late last night to shrill ringing.
my phone lit up, your contact picture glowing in the dark.
i thought about all the times you hurt me
and the people who tried to get involved,
the people who tried to tell me this is wrong.
i thought about your hand on the small of my back,
claws coming out every time i opened my mouth.
i thought about how much you always smelled like weed
to the point that i searched the crowd every time someone smoked.
and i answered.
like nothing ever happened.
like my heart wasn't folding in on itself.
is this love?
and she's already talking to someone else
pretty and funny and full of witty conversation
they're just phone calls and text messages
but every ring sends an ache in my heart
a jolt down my spine
i can feel it looming just over the horizon
the inevitable distancing as i'm once again left behind
for a shiny new toy
The question proposed,
Tests conducted,
Application filled,
Interview given,
Hypotheticals abound,
Preparing for the best and worst,
Cautiously confident,
Yet doubts persist,
The phone sits beside me,
My eyes focused on it,
As I nibble on my nails,
Rock on my chair,
The minutes become hours,
Hours become days,
Thoughts racing upstairs,
Being unable to sleep,
I want to say that I've phoned you
a dozen times this week
and sometimes the dog has answered
and sometimes the parrot
and once
the imperturbable fish in their aquarium
revolved through my ear
like fossils of your tongue
(This is to be recited in those silences which come upon
bars when the juke box and the conversations stop at
the same time for no apparent reason.)
(This is to be recited in the laziness of Sunday afternoons
when yawns are buckets filling with sunlight.)
(This is to be recited late at night on a streetcorner as
the bus retreats into the distance, into the blurred
sound of old cities rusting under water.)
though the mocking wire
slew the greenness of your voice
The vibrant plastic
struck my ear crying
and if only this clay machine
owned me
Next the actual mouth of you
I'd have fled in your breath
frail as dandelion.
Each puff, I wince
As I know what it means:
Someday soon, you'll go.
Each puff, you know,
But you can't help it:
You just have to blow that smoke.
One day, I'll pick up the phone:
It's okay Daddy,
I'll be prepared.
it is now midnight, as it was midnight then.
eyes, blinking furiously from the exhaustion,
squinting at the phone screen clutched firmly
in those two hands, the same two hands pulling
me into this trap, this temptation, the two hands
wrapping itself firmly around the blue-black veins
on my neck, sinking in; the same two hands which fit
like jigsaw puzzles into the crevices of shellfish and
crustaceans, which ravage and tear them apart,
red, burning hot skin torn into pieces; the same hands feeling the cool sensation on the glass protector of the smartphone as the deepest inches of your heart are
left in the open for all to devour, for you to lose and be heard;