Posts tagged ‘prose poem’

August 16, 2015

am not asleep

by jhon baker

been awake too damn long and I’m sick of it.

nothing to do with the cup of coffee I just poured myself in one of my Vincent mugs.

I suppose it isn’t that late but I am hungry and looking for my angry fix.

I haven’t been sleeping well.

and the windows have faces that I can’t comprehend.

I put on my goggles and peer out into the darkness of the backyard sitting next to my wife who is equally as perplexed as I am but today I did not forget my medications.

I still feel the world spin and note the stench of cigarettes and dying sunflowers.

better than earlier when I could scent out the unique putrefaction of several birds finding only one feather.

but the couch got moved.

generally enervated and bone pain sick of it.

half-banana moon, toothpicks on the highway, sick of it.

skin falling off and miswriting sin, a lack of croutons in soup, sick of it.

tattoos, assassinating public figures, the FBI comes and visits me at six am, sick of it.

or I am in stir, a padded room with nothing but this white computer and the insatiable need to sleep.

or I am in a wheat field with crows thinking about a .38 special.

or I am in bed, lying prone, ready to fire with a hard-on and magazine dreams.

add a new category.

eleven: forty-six pm – my eye lids are heavy and I am over tired.

goodnight.

goodnight.

goodnight.

May 23, 2012

water, sewage, the glow of flowers

by jhon baker

there are hundreds of miles of pipe running under the city I live in – probably thousands – all carrying water and sewage to and fro various places but we’re not hooked up and get our water from a well on one side of the house and flush sewage to the other.

 

we are unincorporated.

 

I enjoy time out in the sun.

the sting-y bastard in the corner won’t allow movement or breath.

 

tell me all things.

 

the glow of flowers and teeth drilled,

non-vanity correction but necessary.

 

we kiss like mad children.

snug in the afterglow of infancy.

May 16, 2012

enough light to shadow

by jhon baker

illusions of clowns, teeth bared and wickedly grinned.
delusions, grandiose and thinking that my lawn matters to more than the pope.
allusions to escapism outside Chicago, allusions of beauty before the morning, allusions of ballet toes bleeding from the rain.

high colored reality , divisions of flashing white porcelain against tile decadently scarred by misinforming vandals. embassies from god or the prince of Valiumed ladies distressing the floorboards of old missions;
I hang up the phone and turn to go outside for smoking, drinking coffee and dancing in the rain.

though I can no longer dance, everyday I think of the two-step.

stuck, inescapable nighttimedreaming and forcing awake a moment of clarity and pleasant cool air drafting in from racked open doors, the sound of small animals fleeting, the sound of disquiet under moonlight, and I am in underwear with uneven legs bare, uneven mind shifting under weight of trailing thought.

water bottle is empty.
medicine bottle is empty.

there is enough light to shadow.

freight train carrying boxes of cartoon imagination
sounds from one mile east, moving south south east
and into Chicago
metro.

dawn and I hear the first passenger cars slow to a halt but cannot discern the passengers boarding.

– Hoc Scripsi

March 16, 2012

so

by jhon baker

I am waiting for the moment of inspiration to hit me while I am writing letters and sketching out my journal on a typewriter.

there is a certain dissatisfaction behind failing to get ahead of the melancholy.

I am waiting for the euphoria.

no one can break your heart so you do that little ditty for yourself.

so you break your heart and head

wish the world were different

decadent

and melting away

March 6, 2012

once again

by jhon baker

I am on my back porch as it is a balmy 65 here in northern Illinois. This has been a hard, depressive year for me thus far and I cannot be surprised by my lack of posting, writing and doing anything productive in general.

I’ve read a lot.

Now I am reading less and starting to write more.

I have little to say. but I am enjoying the sun on my back porch, the sun on my face, the sun lying across my body. the wind through my beard and what little hair that is allowed to grow.

wind chimes are dissonant. Cage melodies without the artistic intent. satellite dishes make beautiful houses repugnant. trees look better fully dressed and ready for the rain.

fresh air serves me well, this is still winter but all signs of such have melted, receded into thirsty earth and now that I am out here – I am loathe to go back in.

that is all I have to say.

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