Dark Poetry | Self | Poems on Medium | Short Story | Fiction
Sentient in Eugene
A Rebel Angel Something Something Something Something Something Something Something Something Something Something Something Something
All the clouds look like Star Destroyers.
Wish You Were Here plays through my ear buds.
God damn, could truer words exist?
My eyes are brooks.
Sad pools in a meditation garden.
Sunlight dissipates.
Gooseflesh valleys rise on my shoulder and forearms.
Inside a room in my head, you dance forever; your smile never fades.
Our hands are always entwined here.
Finding my way to baseline, I snap my fingers.
Snap!
Snap!
This breaks the spell of rumination.
Leaves no room for lament.
I am present again.
Perfectly seated with the here & now.
Painfully beautifully thankfully self-aware.
Mother Abigail taught me that trick.
I eat strawberry shortcake rolls.
Chase them with rivers of 2% milk straight from the carton.
Chain smoke Eagle 20’s.
I roll some joints.
Purple Rain plays.
Chugging mango madness, I watch traffic.
Collect wrappers and trash in a grocery sack.
On Broadway I walk through a sudden floral cloud.
It smells like the produce section after you’ve quit nicotine.
Allergies be damned, I inhale and hold Spring for a perfect moment.
In the next crosswalk, RC monster trucks weave through my gait.
Laughing children chase them down a graffiti-bombed alleyway.
I light cigarettes for random, pretty girls.
Lane County sheriffs race past, red and blue dice rolling.
They squawk like obnoxious magpies.
I say hi to girls.
I split a cigarette with a pretty brunette & tell her dad jokes.
And still, I miss you in these frozen moments.
I hate you.
Hate myself for waiting so long to move here because I didn’t want to move away.
The brunette’s lips have stopped moving.
She is smiling.
I snap my fingers.
Snap!
Snap!
Snap!
I ask the brunette "How do you make a hot dog stand?"
She shrugs.
Her smile strong.
"Take its chair," I say & she gives me her number.
Two blocks east, a swarm of bicyclists split going around me.
A herd of spandex reappears in front of me.
Bikers speed away single file. I shout Stupid Sexy Flanders!
At another crosswalk I smoke joints with liberty spike & Doc Martens. Gliding submerged in smoke like Abby Road Beatles, we split at 7-11.
Near Nikata Brewery, I write long hand at a picnic table.
A deep-dish pizza & a Heineken fuel the effort.
Local bands do sound checks.
I wonder what you’re doing.
Your face is always there.
You are always there.
I snap fingers.
Snap!
Snap!
You.
Corvallis.
The past.
You’re one of those things we must give up let go move on from.
Another lesson place I’ve died that no longer serves a purpose in my life.
I am stoic when the server returns.
I ask her how to make a hot dog stand.
"Take away his chair," I say.
Rolling her eyes, she tucks my check beneath an empty Heineken bottle.
I smile, grateful to be living my life.
Run Through the Jungle plays and I don’t miss you anymore.
