Poems

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great poem! Very real and true to how a lot of people feel at times.

 

[ChrisGibson]

Amen





As he spreads oil over me and tastes my skin, as he prepares to enter in to that holy place he says, this is like an anointing, and I murmur amen

I am willing to be his messiah and my messiah, to walk us out of the bleak place, to take myself from the hollow space I was in before he came.

The rituals have been done, the sacraments of initiation worked long ago. White powder and lines, they make up the vine that makes up the fruit of our fucking.



You’re here and I’m here and there… is nowhere we need to be, so all we have is time. There is time for the talk and time for the chatter. There is time to roll this joint, smoke this cigarette, sniff this bottle which makes me want to take off my clothes. You make me want to take off my clothes, I do take off my clothes. It is some sacred ritual, nigh stronger than communion at that silly church with all these silly people. You take your time, with a credit card you cut the line and make it nice and long and fine. Like gods of old, we heat the sacrifice and snort it up, find eternity in time.



I see you’re around, but I don’t call out to you cause I don’t have time for you

I mean I want to, I mean I love that the more we make love the more you smell like sugar, and I love your skin so smooth, smooth as chocolate. I love the length of you and the taste of you and press of you, but such a thing as you takes time, takes lots of time, and right now it is time that I do not have, so I stop myself from speaking, and move on.



We sang with exuma, damballa oh damballa while the red scarf was lain over the naked lamp bulb and you lit the marijuana and we drifted into something darker.



If you get quiet the saints will tell it to you. If you burn a candle here and there you’ll make a light for yourself.

belief comes by training.

Belief comes by waiting. I’ve spent sixteen years on the edge of something, waiting for this rough magic not even knowing it had already come.

Don’t fret over the slowness of things. Even as you go to sell the weddings rings from a marriage that made you then made your life hell. In this dark night dare to go walking, there is no companion like the man of cloven hooves

And say, lord of darkness and king of light, lord of darkness and king of light





And you said I am your church, I am your peace, I am your body and your blood, but how can I be these owned things?

Become the road to salvation, take a wand and trace a star on the sand, burn five tapers then

Learn the five and the six and the seven pointed star and

Become your own salvation

The only jesus that ever was is the jesus who spoke to you

View all others as so much bullshit and build a church in your own skin



I am terrified to tell you there are no road signs here,

This is all the land of dragons, and you will have to find your own way, make your churches and carve your own gods

Here, in the borderland you will never make sense to anyone again, and the words they speak will be so much bubble and babel to you, twists and twists around the Tower. Seeds, and roots with promise neither of blossom nor of flower.

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was an well done poem with some great imagery!

 

[ChrisGibson]

That was an well done poem with some great imagery!

: )

 

[ChrisGibson]

Trio



1.

I’m much better at this before the sun comes up, gathering words, bowing down before a dark lord of black fire, leftovers of last night when I made first the incantation and followed it with the second

the white folks say the world is getting scarier and scarier, but to some of us it is the same,

take the time to hang your ribbons and your prayers on trees the same way your great grandfathers hung negroes

remember the old faith before you cry out for a new one


2.

You never knew you were waiting for your legacy,

you never knew you were taking on things,

taking on wings, taking on ancestors and the work they did,

taking a bone or a feather or a link of chain

and tying it to your name with a thousand symbols,

and you never knew—you hoped for children made of ink and thinking,

linking you to what would be,



3.

I don’t know what you want—

well, you know I do, no that’s a lie—

the only thing I know

is you’re not getting it.

i have to keep this to myself,

I have to keep this all tied up with locks and

block your eyes up.

I have lit candles and burnt incense to your

Incomprehension, gathered stones and

chicken bones to keep you from my country

my borderland, the only thing worth

holding

 

[CharmedFan28]

Fantastic poems! Thank you for posting them!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Fantastic poems! Thank you for posting them!

Thank you for reading them.

 

[ChrisGibson]

little fruits




Hide your little fruits away

They aren't to the tastes of all the people

All these things you do and say, serving up your heart all covered

in blood is just too much

You gave it with a smile, they’d laughed all day,

Disgusted by your bloody hands and naked grief

they shook their heads and turned away.



Hide those little fruits away

This is why God made idle conversation

Everything you used to say

Reminded them of their dirty skin

Reminded them of their cardboard state

Reminded of the homeless tramp within



Hide your fruits away, blossom at three a.m. with cigarettes and bedbugs,

foster every wicked holy thought, grow them glossy,

weave them like a great rug,

Weave in circles and in the dark gain great cat vision,

weave your secrets into a mane, night dark and hidden



2.



I get up with all the world at 4 in the morning. The still black sky is thick as this town is thin, and your head is full with should have been, as the land and every line that's in your hands holds onto that which never was



Who said you only fast if you're religious?

We're all fastening on the parties of the new religion, and at five a.m. the sirens

Ring again and tell us jesus is coming, but it seems we’ll all be left behind



All around: the world is burning

Every single thing is burning

If I cannot escape the wreck,

If I cannot collect my stuff to flee the furnace

teach me how to live amidst the ruins





3. You saw the blood on my head and asked if it was alright, but I was so used to being abused I didn't even feel it



This is the meaning of trauma

Ten years later you get the news about old drama that your body has known every day since it happened



Just now you map and pen the geography of danger you could never speak to



You picture his face, imagine telling her, “I will never think of you again”



And then

Devoutly wish it to be true





4.



Burning

And all the world is burning

And if all thjngs are burning while nobody sees

then please give me a way out



And way out we are drowning

And there is just no bailing

The people have stopped yelling

They don't even feel it

And if the world is drowning

Will you bale me out?



5.



In my dreams I know you're dead but you come back

I test the quality of that reality and can't detect the logic

I fall for it every time

In this dream it snowed and I was lost and then you came for me with your love and your luminous eyes you came for me and spoke with your mother's voice and you took my hand in that little birdlike one I still remember

Mama, I remember the weight of ashes and how weightless, white and on the wind, in blue black night you flew

Dust and ashes, earth of heaven and heaven of earth

You were beautiful then.



6.



You go check your messages

And I'll wipe up the come stains

They're dried on and need a firm hand

And

So do the come stains

And I'm tired of npr, cause it wants to be so cool

And you go make the grilled cheese and I'll go breaking all the rules

and you says where's Velveeta and I don't have the time for it

And you want to put your feet up, ah, there's just no time for it

She says why don't you have your own thoughts?

I pretend to not hear

I'm still washing out last night’s stains

He cracks open a craft beer



If he was going to tell the truth he'd say there's just no time for it

But he bought a jar of someone’s thoughts, ate them all, but left the pits and

I'm putting on Velveeta. The secret is don't burn the bread

And I'm wiping up the love stains

And tossing blankets on the bed



7.



Wouldn't it be nice

If there was nothing left to say?

But even if there isn't

We're gonna to say it anyway



We never told the truth but who was asking for it?

Please let me tickle your ears.

Let me take all your fears

Blow them all away and

Give you new ones



And you're not okay and I'm not okay

and the elevator is going down again and then

we have to find our way up when there aren't

any stairs

 

[CharmedFan28]

Excellent to get so many poems at once. These really resonated with me because they felt real. Great writing as always and I look forward to more!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Excellent to get so many poems at once. These really resonated with me because they felt real. Great writing as always and I look forward to more!

I'm so glad you enoyed the poems

 

[ChrisGibson]

oremus



And that was the time of life I was almost happy

For three years, after you died, I wandered alone and empty and so dull I would have loved a pinprick, and even blood tasted like stale water

Now, for the second night in a row, a moon as yellow as the gold I don’t have, and as sick as shoes, trails across the paper sky, an even while we come to the end of this chaotic season, even when I do not know how I will keep this roof over my head, while children starve and rich folks tuck their dogs to bed

I give something like thanks



You know this is serious business

I’m talking about in gods we trust

Gods of song and poetry

In gods we trust

And gods who gave the fateful visions

In those gods we trust

And who overturned religion, in old gods we trust

In old gods becoming new and the vision on the highest hill at the darkest hour

And an old chant in a language lost and the fire in the heart of a flower

At how words spin out like silk before the beginning of the dawn

And we gather in the cavernous church to sing the ancient song, dip our fingers in the cross shaped font, poke it with it pen

Baptize our weary bodies then baptize them once again

We trust

We trust

We trust

All we sleeping in storage units tonight

We pray to you

We pray to you

All we crawling inside empty apartments, we pray to you, we pray to you

And those bundled beneath coats, keep rats for warmth, we pray to you

And the man whose mouth was apermant bandage, he prays to you to

Stretched out on benches someone made to not be lain on, paying for rooms we payin far

Too much for, hospital room patience relieved, don’t want to go out the door again

We pray to you we pray to you

The very lowly pray to you

You promised we’d be fed

give us our fucking daily bread.

 

[CharmedFan28]

An excellent poem! Sad but fascinating. The religious aspect really added to it. Great work.

 

[ChrisGibson]

sunrise service



Every tongue is different

Not one takes your cock the same

Don’t listen to that Sunday school bullshit that tells you sex is shallow

There is nothing deeper than getting on your knees in a dark room at three in the afternoon or two in the morning, than the sacrament of pot and meth baking like incense at the altar of our entry, the taste of salt on skin and the honey sweet taste of you, swelling in my mouth

That marble table only held wine

I held you inside me,

we twined into a thing that preferred moans to shouting

Hosannas at six am while the grey july sky, heavy with unspent rain, brought up the morning while I sucked out your pain



I am still thinking of john all these years later, of the old man with his bad breath like old old silenus, who led me to the mini bacchanal on knees, before a wall, me and you and you sharing, smoking, daring, naked in our bald enjoyment as beyond the window grey light turned dawn on Lake Michigan

And later we walked in the seventy five eighty degree heat to the beach and to the pier and you collected plastic bottles, strange like all meth heads are strange, and we rode a train till you got off on Jarvis, then only I remained to travel back to my hotel room



I never saw you again



We are

Little and lively as I was

Bed bugs like bags of blood

Crawled up and down my body

Angels of a fucked up heaven, mistaking me for jesus

And no Jacob or Nathanael stand in mute amazement

While I crush them under my fingers that come away smelling of burnt toast and coriander

By god’s dander and holy sweat balls,

We linger in this bullshit and hope for another blessed day



The old dispensation is washed out and rinsed, and set beside us once more, and you don’t even have the vision to realize you have no eyes. Every surprise is wrapped in the old paper, and inside is the same thing I gave you that you gave me that I gave you that we keep forgetting.

Every day is groundhog day

and there’s a key to break the spell,

it sat on the tip of your grandma’s tongue,

it was five feet from your mother’s tongue

You have never known it

and so you never feel

You stood on the edge of the water and the water said take your clothes off, but you were busy yammering, worried about your own fat rolls to hear, living in that old drama that was never yours



Now listen, I will tell and you’ll forget

It rolls off your ass like water

For all those who are discontent, for all those who are discontent

Oh, ye who are all discontent, I’ll bring you a new gospel

But you have to write it

And you have to write it

And you have to write

And you too



And in the end salvation will not come cause

You were just too tired.








sybilline



All my powerful visions dissolve in rainbow teeth and the taste of my own breath

I have prayed to be the prophet and have yet to be the witch yet here I spin only words that are not words, almost visions that are passion

The old tale was made of our head, made for those who did not need it, who were so quickly turned by every little thing that landed before your face like lightning.

And so you didn’t know that this art will be drawn from your blood, this art will be flayed from you skin. This story will be smoked, it will be rolled and made of glass pipes and jism, the ink or orgasms, these our words will be woven from two bodies pressed together in the middle of night, and all our sight will be inward to outward to inward to “I bet you didn’t know you could see the back of your head” while I am still yearning to see the back of mine.



In the bedtime before bed you close your eyes, put all your wizardry away,

lay still and give yourself up to the most useless of things.

Remember you once thought that you were useful too.

 

[CharmedFan28]

I was excited to read more of your poems! These are great! Very descriptive and sexy in parts. Hope you post more soon!

 

[ChrisGibson]

benjamin



I fell in love again with another version of the man

I’ve been loving for twenty years

He does all the right things and in my dreams

we have deep and meaningful conversation.

One day he’ll leave his man for me, one day

he’ll see I’d be the better husband

Looking at me you would tell me I was worthy

and unearth then all the bullshit I had piled

around myself and I would save you from all the

superficial shit,

and it’d cling to you,

and we would fit from these imagined pieces

satisfaction







dan



I said we should stay together, and you said,

well I don’t know about that,

and I didn’t love myself yet, so I pressed on,

back then I always pressed on,

and we were standing on a lawn outside your dorm room

and you had bad skin,

and a heart to match,

but love does not notice and infatuation doesn’t know this isn’t love,

and a month later we were done and I was dumb because

I didn’t understand you could never know me cause

you didn’t even know yourself,

and most, the most,

the absolute most interesting thing about you

was the love I gave

​

levi



And I asked, “Are the trees really big?”

And you said:

Only at night... that's when you walk around messing with people

um... interesting

and I said:

I was going to be a tree once

I think the weed's finally kicking in

You said:

We'll all be trees in the end

as we were in the beginning

I said:

It never kicks out

all of our roots tangled together

birds and squirrels in our fucking hair

The world's one big energy orgy

One of us said:

I like birds they smell marvelous when burning and they

all taste like chicken

Except for chicken.... which tastea a lot like dinosaur

I remembered giving you head on the edge of your futon in may,

and how we ended up kissing and fucking,

we got high and higher and higher,

and I’ve loved you so long, and….



“Dinosaurs worth the trouble,” one of us said,

“some of them taste good as fuck.

I just like kicking dinosaurs in the legs.”







remains



When sex is gone

And lust is gone

And love’s thrown out the window

When God is gone

And faith is gone

And the blood that’s on the lintel’s

Only wax

When desire’s gone,

When yearning’s gone

Then fire

Well, what is there?

 

[CharmedFan28]

Those were some great poems! I am glad you are posting them more regularly! Keep up the good work!

 

[ChrisGibson]

when we were drunk and you said....



I used to own an elephant back in 1931, used to have orgies on top of him



That's just nasty



It did get pretty messy... I think it emotionally damaged his personality



I know you were never really the same either

Its hard to come back from that sort of thing



elephant orgies



All that peach Schnapps



and the midgets



I mean, you're not supposed to call them midgets, but....



the midgets





little people and elephants



I miss the midgets

I miss the elephants and the rattle rattle of the

trains in Chicago

and I miss the bath house they won’t let me

come in anymore



the midgets aren’t allowed their either

and they don’t let in the polar bears



everyone is fucking but us







to poets



#1



A sentence will save us.

Listen, if you want to write

poetry

it is as simple as speaking the truth,

collapse the cheap house with all its bullshit,





#2



How long have you sat at this window,

not looking out this window, imagining it

was something else?



Alright.

So no matter how many words

this feels like the first word,

this feels like the first groping

toward something





#3



I, I, I

forgot how many volumes I had messed

up my mind with

the memory of finer things.

I divine here another thing.

I have lived eight years here and before

that I never lived at all.

They lied, they lied about it all.



They said it was a hawk

when it was just a raven

They lived, they lied so tall

making mountains out of mole hills

and beaches out of shavings,

fingernail clippings

and this is where the bugs are.




conversations with men






walk



In the second hour of the conversation

when we’re both high

you say go to the park, take a walk and get to the park,

and I am thinking about nature and rivers and you say

I always liked the area by the sanitation station,

it was always quiet and private.

And you said look that way, walk that way, see some guy,

and keep walking, talking,

as the conversation continues,

find a secret place, you say,

do something new,

you tell me to do

something you have done before.

 

[CharmedFan28]

Excellent poems! Love your work and hope you post more soon!

 

[shrae]

little fruits




Hide your little fruits away

They aren't to the tastes of all the people

All these things you do and say, serving up your heart all covered

in blood is just too much

You gave it with a smile, they’d laughed all day,

Disgusted by your bloody hands and naked grief

they shook their heads and turned away.



Hide those little fruits away

This is why God made idle conversation

Everything you used to say

Reminded them of their dirty skin

Reminded them of their cardboard state

Reminded of the homeless tramp within



Hide your fruits away, blossom at three a.m. with cigarettes and bedbugs,

foster every wicked holy thought, grow them glossy,

weave them like a great rug,

Weave in circles and in the dark gain great cat vision,

weave your secrets into a mane, night dark and hidden



2.



I get up with all the world at 4 in the morning. The still black sky is thick as this town is thin, and your head is full with should have been, as the land and every line that's in your hands holds onto that which never was



Who said you only fast if you're religious?

We're all fastening on the parties of the new religion, and at five a.m. the sirens

Ring again and tell us jesus is coming, but it seems we’ll all be left behind



All around: the world is burning

Every single thing is burning

If I cannot escape the wreck,

If I cannot collect my stuff to flee the furnace

teach me how to live amidst the ruins





3. You saw the blood on my head and asked if it was alright, but I was so used to being abused I didn't even feel it



This is the meaning of trauma

Ten years later you get the news about old drama that your body has known every day since it happened



Just now you map and pen the geography of danger you could never speak to



You picture his face, imagine telling her, “I will never think of you again”



And then

Devoutly wish it to be true





4.



Burning

And all the world is burning

And if all thjngs are burning while nobody sees

then please give me a way out



And way out we are drowning

And there is just no bailing

The people have stopped yelling

They don't even feel it

And if the world is drowning

Will you bale me out?



5.



In my dreams I know you're dead but you come back

I test the quality of that reality and can't detect the logic

I fall for it every time

In this dream it snowed and I was lost and then you came for me with your love and your luminous eyes you came for me and spoke with your mother's voice and you took my hand in that little birdlike one I still remember

Mama, I remember the weight of ashes and how weightless, white and on the wind, in blue black night you flew

Dust and ashes, earth of heaven and heaven of earth

You were beautiful then.



6.



You go check your messages

And I'll wipe up the come stains

They're dried on and need a firm hand

And

So do the come stains

And I'm tired of npr, cause it wants to be so cool

And you go make the grilled cheese and I'll go breaking all the rules

and you says where's Velveeta and I don't have the time for it

And you want to put your feet up, ah, there's just no time for it

She says why don't you have your own thoughts?

I pretend to not hear

I'm still washing out last night’s stains

He cracks open a craft beer



If he was going to tell the truth he'd say there's just no time for it

But he bought a jar of someone’s thoughts, ate them all, but left the pits and

I'm putting on Velveeta. The secret is don't burn the bread

And I'm wiping up the love stains

And tossing blankets on the bed



7.



Wouldn't it be nice

If there was nothing left to say?

But even if there isn't

We're gonna to say it anyway



We never told the truth but who was asking for it?

Please let me tickle your ears.

Let me take all your fears

Blow them all away and

Give you new ones



And you're not okay and I'm not okay

and the elevator is going down again and then

we have to find our way up when there aren't

any stairs

Thank you