Recently, some cool poets visited our city of Asheville, NC from Baltimore, Knoxville and Oakland. We convinced them to stop by the studio on their way out of town and record some work. Here is number four in Jesse Crawford. Listen and read…
On a windy day Greenpeace stopped me.
He asked me your name. I told him “Ocean”
&only from the awkward weight of the word
Faith in a casual conversation. He told me
of the boats’ unconscionable appetites.
Of life’s quiet funeral procession.
The petition convulsed in his hand like
a fucked-up flag, signaling the world’s
secession from my-self.
With winter and a pumice stone,
I will erase my body like a name.
I will become the loosening shrimp tangled in your trawling net.
*
I blame reality on the oblivious pool.
Reflecting nothing but the emptying
blue of the sky above it. Time shakes
inside your cavities, echoes its ineffability.
A seasonal sweater is a dark shroud,
protects your face from the snow.
It melts. Turns into plain old water. If
we were children I could find a way to
contain the change we both admit is
beautiful. But we have grown. Grown
into the world like touch-me-nots
on the wall of an invasive garden.
*
December 2nd, 2016
Death grips into life as the
vehicle is torn and stripped
to parts of anonymity. The
helicopters circling the tragedy
are anxious vultures eager to
purge this one for the next.
Facebook sends me anecdotes of a person I never
knew, but was. In my shack at 4A.M.,
I see the posts on the lost pile up. I move
my cursor and hover over Like
as if grief was the world’s only option.
Unable to sleep, I drink flat beer and
light the snipes in my alabaster ashtray.
Under dawn’s grey embrace,
I kill a spider in fear of it and
cry for hours mourning my loss.
___
Catch the rest of our Writers On Tour in the upcoming month. Damn fine bunch.
