My Youth On Shelves
Free Verse
Published in
May 7, 2021
My youth on shelves, book-ended
A contrived quietness here in the middle of this cavern
full of flipping, clacking, sneezing, clinking, squeaking
humanity
Humanity —
cross sectioned and naked
before one another,
without pretense,
for free even,
which is usually
a bastard hoodwink,
but here is a
bastion of compassion
A holdover
A holdout
A relic of adaptation
and a modicum of respite
for a five year old
or a ten year old addiction
We’re all on equal ground
fighting demons here
publicly or personally:
A man prays aloud
with metronomic foot taps/
Monolithic Term Papers without mercy/
Lives with dirty clothes and lost moxie/
A confluence —
the stirring of human silt
It’s alive
and it’s talking,
Listen!
Justin Haag 2021
