08-14-2024, 03:24 AM
So this poem was published in some online mag so I probably shouldn't mess with it, but I will of course.
Frank Ocean
There’s a death factory at the end of our road.
They package up pretty parcels, tied up with a forget-me-not bow.
Yellow boxes arrive, Christmas lights blinking,
in the dead of the morning, in the heat of the night.
Maybe it’s better, this cascade of memory,
unboxed jigsaw puzzles, pieces half missing,
than the cold, hard remaining,
still sharp as a tack, still blunt as a knife.
Alone in my car, a warm hard cocoon,
Frank Ocean singing, no sign of pupation.
Red reptile eyes retreat fast before me,
drifting along the sibilant curve.
Driving to pick up my beautiful son
he still in the fecund of growing;
With a heart full of beats;
I've never seen a dead body before, so he told me,
as we went through the door, to the bed sitting room.
The sluggish procession, a chattering bruise
of grey, blue, and black, unwinds fat before me,
a scar through the fields
you cold in front, me at the back,
warm and listening to Frank Ocean;
Why see the world, when you’ve got the beach?
The blunt, dumb sea water stares back at the crowd
with a bovine, blank look, and the basalt grey fingers
crisscross the horizon, accusing the nonchalant sky.
Willow’s song plays
a song of seduction, a song of redemption.
If only he’d listened, the zealot, the fool.
The Vampire’s kiss, as cold as the sun,
caresses my neck, a whisper forgotten, and
the broken old shaman croaks out his incantation
mic’d up like a failing comedian, on a stage made of clay,
the crowd sidles off; we are all dying here.
Frank Ocean
There’s a death factory at the end of our road.
They package up pretty parcels, tied up with a forget-me-not bow.
Yellow boxes arrive, Christmas lights blinking,
in the dead of the morning, in the heat of the night.
Maybe it’s better, this cascade of memory,
unboxed jigsaw puzzles, pieces half missing,
than the cold, hard remaining,
still sharp as a tack, still blunt as a knife.
Alone in my car, a warm hard cocoon,
Frank Ocean singing, no sign of pupation.
Red reptile eyes retreat fast before me,
drifting along the sibilant curve.
Driving to pick up my beautiful son
he still in the fecund of growing;
With a heart full of beats;
I've never seen a dead body before, so he told me,
as we went through the door, to the bed sitting room.
The sluggish procession, a chattering bruise
of grey, blue, and black, unwinds fat before me,
a scar through the fields
you cold in front, me at the back,
warm and listening to Frank Ocean;
Why see the world, when you’ve got the beach?
The blunt, dumb sea water stares back at the crowd
with a bovine, blank look, and the basalt grey fingers
crisscross the horizon, accusing the nonchalant sky.
Willow’s song plays
a song of seduction, a song of redemption.
If only he’d listened, the zealot, the fool.
The Vampire’s kiss, as cold as the sun,
caresses my neck, a whisper forgotten, and
the broken old shaman croaks out his incantation
mic’d up like a failing comedian, on a stage made of clay,
the crowd sidles off; we are all dying here.