2 poems by Justin Reynolds
torture
driving ten miles under the speed limit on a crisp, sunny day. it's a flat tire, it's a pebble cracking your windshield when you're cruising 70 down the interstate. it's a runny nose, coughing, it's your joints aching, and it's your constant lust for sleep. it becomes the way people speak to you, the way they talk down to you, it becomes your co-workers, it becomes your ex-girlfriends who call you, drunk, at 3 a.m. when you're in bed with someone else. i feel tortured--tortured when the alarm blasts off each morning--tortured when the music ends, when the books are burnt & the bars are closed, tortured--I hear the wind howl through the trees on nights like these where the hours dissolve and before you know, it's tomorrow. more than meets the eye. we're not transformers, but for the most part, we're close. you could find jimmy rey sitting in the corner of a sushi joint scribbling words on the back of the sheet you use to order that raw shit, but just because he don't take kindly to the razor doesn't mean he couldn't tell you about the presidencies of polk or arthur or anything you'd like to know about a man named vincent who saw too much and figured his best bet was to end it all in a wheat field. yesterday, i turned on jeopardy & one of the categories was american lit. the $2,000 question (what is. . .answer?) talked about an author and booze and post offices and we know the answer (what is. . .question?) but none of them did. i'd take the two large, tell trebek to fuck himself in latin and german and french and klingon, and fire it off to student loans or go to atlantic city and throw that shit down on red. i'm taking all my anger out to dinner and after a night of caviar, lobster tails and blue label, she'll be nice and loose, nice and happy, the opportune time to smack that bitch across the face, flip her over and show her the futility of wrath. i am transforming, i am a precipice, i will stick a periscope up your ass just so i can get a good look at what a heart that has strangled itself and is in denial looks like. i can't wash the scent of dog off my hands, but it's more pleasant than what greed smells like, i don't own many clothes i am constantly hungry perpetually thirsty and have yet to taste the drink that clenches the palate best, i sit among stooges, thinking, how do these people talk about these things? thinking, i can't believe i can still write in cursive. but the minute hand keeps trying to fuck the hour hand, it is getting closer, now it pounces, but the hour hand only goes for missionary once in awhile, he doesn't have all day. under the right circumstances, i'd materialize a pitcher of sangria snap my fingers and there we'd be, skipping stones across still water & watching cities burn, but it's just not the same anymore, the tattoo inside my chest is dissappearing, the clocks kills what once were pleasant memories, i am comforted by fresh air and sunlight but am forced to spend the better part of the day indoors, this is just how it is, this is just how it will be, i can just take a deep breath and warm myself with a mantra. huddled up in a corner, staring at the floor or ceiling, i'm whispering: la tristesse durera toujours * |