A Crapload of Potential Poems Written as Prose Poems

Disclaimer-these are all rough drafts posted here for the purpose of workshopping, so if phrases from appear in future work that I might try to publish, it will not be as it is presented here. For other readers-do your worst, as I would appreciate the feedback.

Poem #1
We are waiting for a paradox between the grain sown, the grain dying, the growing and dead and rising again, while waiting not for destruction, but for a light, blinding and revealing. I do not question the crumby soil or deep-veined trues, but my belief in them as if they are only waiting for men silent and thief-like to wheel them away to show the god waiting in the machine, waiting for the curtain to lower and fall, to bow and strut and wave, receiving creation as a genuine gift.

#2
It was near midnight and Johnny Cash was on the radio. The stray streetlamps glowed only as nightlights for the hollers, and the road was empty of cars. The gunpowder of 4th of July lingered in the air, turning in my seat I watched you fast asleep, and wonder why the moonlight and willow strands of your body could leave me worshiping you, but loveless. I admired your perfections, the way the lip's curve reflected the brightness beneath, but I was afraid that I could destroy it with ordinary desire, not for the stars or moons, but for the fingers to hands to arms, and toes to feet to legs running in the copse, lying beneath the open trees.

#3
I walk with a ghost, who is love vanished, and who is love replaced by the noon-time beauties that walk before me, around me. But the ones walking before me I am incapable of embracing; I cannot accept them, as if I cast myself into a myth, where I sing for the past and stillborn future.

#4
The angriest of men do not keep ledgers of all wrongs--real and imagined--but are half drunk on memories and dreams--the subtle changes in clouds over a vacant field while recalling a childhood where others buried themselves beneath their chores--domestic and churchly. And I step away and towards the glass doors all around, seeking refuge in destruction, and fearing its reprisals. Why not disintegrate upon impact? Fire extinguisher to door, and have it burst in flames: a ghost to carry away my un-reckoned hurricanes. But ghost-less, my ledger counts random destruction and the longing, fatigued beneath the sun, for all these bones to be mended.

#5
There is a leech, long and metallic, attached to my spine, and at night as I try to sing myself to sleep I listen to its mechanical whirring, and as my consciousness dissolves I feel my blood slip. As it siphons, I play with its centipedial legs, with care disabling the with closest legs, toying with it, picking it as with a scab. What pain that it might be, it's also a toy, an undying dog; something so sweet in its persistence that I love it.

#6
As I walk over the ground it feels as if it rumbles, its folds and bumps rise and fall as waves. I am unsteady, swearing off edges or heights, and favoring fields and streets clean and safe.

fragment
The ground with its bumps rumbles as the ocean when I walk--I am unsteady and reach for something

akh-kha

#7
I know nothing right now, not with this oceanic turf that pitches beneath as I walk.

I feel a danger to myself, and need something for courage and something for my nerves, but it is still not the end. I am a danger to myself, but not to you.

But an explanation: I have days, months, years (all discreet units so the stench from failure fails to carry over) where My heart feels loveless, where time seems endless and life and death seem to be two sides of the same coin, and only appear as the obverse of the other and if I were to die that life would carry over, but in the way that I imagined Australia when I was younger. I can't run and can't jump, and life breathes through my veins, echoes in my lungs in asthmatic fashion.

I am a danger to myself, but only slightly, like a dodgy tackle where I get a bit a leg and a bit of ball, but the other guy still falls, then rebounding in a fit of profanity. I am a slight danger to myself and unsteady, like the one time on the boat where I felt the fancy to throw my glasses overboard. I might get hurt, but I might only think of it.

I am a bit unsteady, unsure of whether to live more in the past or in the future or in the present, and if I live for this present moment, does it do me any good to compare how well I'm living in this moment to other times? It's circular and dizzying, but I want to take your hand and kiss it, take your head and cradle it, and wander together towards some sort of train (i'll take whatever is available) and declare my passions, coded into some language that only the two of us know.

Hopefully, not in so many words, but I'm verbose when drunk, coaxed out of my melancholy slumber, and all of this would require drink, perhaps more for you than for me, but what the hell, I'm on a roll, making a toast out of my fragility, singing a sad song for the glasses I tossed into the sea.

#8
The fear is sweet, as sweet as the chilling eastern wind in january, and so it is-- 2 hours after midnight, and sleep seems to be death. I'd rather watch Bob Dylan videos and forget my tiredness, and lose myself in the ramblings of the old man. why should I sleep? my eyes turn towards the darkness, towards the black wheel that spins above the snowy earth, and the stars bleeding into the its rim yell out in invitation and terror. I bite my lip; it looks so sweet: to lose this turncoat corpse, and seditious mind and blend into shadow.

fragment
But, but... I dread this sleep, this ordinary sleep free from any ties to death. Afraid to leave this charmed and cursed day, afraid to face a fresh brigade of moments and somehow turn them to my favor.