deepundergroundpoetry.com
pulmonary edema
There was water there.
It wasn't like pretty crystal,chlorine clear or even that baby before it's even born nursery color.
Brown, bad stuff has lived here for a long time and always will, four tubes of nescafe instant in the mouth without a sip of liquid sludge. It looks like the substances I should be coughing up every morning. If I could get the dirt out. The toxic, late night infomercial, elevator jazz, maple syrup I been breathing hoping one of those molecules to be the one that ends the rest. There's always an old mexican dude playing some ominous little Spanish tune in my head while tumbleweeds and worthless dust blow across these empty streets.
Fucking dust.
Just reminds you things are dead, getting close to dead or even worse just plain obsolete.
Need to change the sheets.
Get some shit to wipe all them ashes with different destinations than I had planned for em off the coffee table.
I finally woke up and she wasn't there.
or rather
I woke up and she finally wasn't there.
One time in late November up on Lake Ontario in Oswego, N.Y. we were hopskotching the huge floating ice chunks banging around the breaker. I was really drunk and I remember asking myself if you slipped down between two of them, how bad would you be crushed? and would I really go in after you? and if I did would I really even try to get either of us out? This probably would have made a great choose your own adventure nintendo 64 type game concept back then and I'm sure a bunch of teenagers who hadn't really touched boobs yet would have had their parents buy it for them and we'd both be financially stable forever now. But neither of us fell so I felt it best to not even mention it and we don't even speak let alone play like that anymore.
It wasn't like pretty crystal,chlorine clear or even that baby before it's even born nursery color.
Brown, bad stuff has lived here for a long time and always will, four tubes of nescafe instant in the mouth without a sip of liquid sludge. It looks like the substances I should be coughing up every morning. If I could get the dirt out. The toxic, late night infomercial, elevator jazz, maple syrup I been breathing hoping one of those molecules to be the one that ends the rest. There's always an old mexican dude playing some ominous little Spanish tune in my head while tumbleweeds and worthless dust blow across these empty streets.
Fucking dust.
Just reminds you things are dead, getting close to dead or even worse just plain obsolete.
Need to change the sheets.
Get some shit to wipe all them ashes with different destinations than I had planned for em off the coffee table.
I finally woke up and she wasn't there.
or rather
I woke up and she finally wasn't there.
One time in late November up on Lake Ontario in Oswego, N.Y. we were hopskotching the huge floating ice chunks banging around the breaker. I was really drunk and I remember asking myself if you slipped down between two of them, how bad would you be crushed? and would I really go in after you? and if I did would I really even try to get either of us out? This probably would have made a great choose your own adventure nintendo 64 type game concept back then and I'm sure a bunch of teenagers who hadn't really touched boobs yet would have had their parents buy it for them and we'd both be financially stable forever now. But neither of us fell so I felt it best to not even mention it and we don't even speak let alone play like that anymore.
Published 5th Nov 2015
All writing remains the property of the author. Don't use it for any purpose without their permission.
likes 3
reading list entries 1
comments 3
reads 951
Commenting Preference:
The author encourages honest critique.
6th Nov 2015 12:48pm
John, you are such a unique writer, your poetry hits like a hammer, and makes the wheels in your mind churn. As always I enjoyed it a lot.
21st Nov 2015 11:08am
We don't even speak let alone play like that anymore.
Too close to home, in a brushstroke.
Too close to home, in a brushstroke.
29th Nov 2015 8:58am
I like this a lot; each segment is actually pressing the same "point," or feeling, but from a different take. I feel the final passages are the thread that connects each disparate segment/ image being pulled drawing them together, to hammer the bleak message home. I am not sure whether other readers will or will not sense the connection between each segment because it is so abstract. But -- I think that the title also serves that purpose - like a finger pointing in a certain direction which is underlined by each component. Sometimes when I write things that seem to grab the essence of that feeling in a variety of different ways, and then I string them together, it seems obvoius to ME what I am pointing towards, which is one thing illustrated by many, but I find out it is not obvious to my reader. I don't know -- throwing the thought out there because I'm curious how you see it, how others see it, and any responsive ideas.
