The Heart She Handled
There I sat in dying grass, sighing open remorse.
Forgiven by impulse; I’m still held accountable
knowing that intimacy sides with lust
yet still wishing that others felt of the night
simply wanting things never to fail.
Outside of this remains the fact:
My veins raised for you
torn through and flowing,
offering my blood.
You licked what praised you.
Tasting love then leaving.
So feel my sides,
open them without caution.
Never think twice of blood spilled for love
merely press guts aside & focus on the goal
of reaching heart with hand
& teaching me this injured lesson.
Earth and its canoe
Down south it was just me and you
with nothing to try for and nothing to lose,
we rode back to that old hotel.
Did I kiss you? I still can’t tell…
My mind has become a fog
no, a steam
no, a boiler hat
Outdated and Flat
against the wall of an antique pawn shop
where sad furs hang from hooks hung loosely
beside an open backdoor.
Now, in morning’s face
I put on regret’s mask.
Soul flees, body strives,
to keep alive while my heart dies.
Then a beggar bangs the door,
beckons counsel from a borrowed ear,
wanting nothing more than to be heard by something,
goddammit anything, that will make a face or sigh.
He asks for something old.
I inform him that I don’t let go of my possessions.
I see her face in the hallway mirror.
A sweet excuse, like sugared milk, is offered to the vagrant.
GOODBYE.
Man is not a Bird
The tattered man’s patterns kept him quiet as a knife,
as he lay alone with his thoughts of his want for a wife, and a dog.
But nothing brings solace like a night on the town, so he walked around
and came back to the start of his life, in the world.
The despondent dreams of the liars and thieves that surrounded his youth
ran him out from where he was born.
The scorn of his life was a reason to keep off the streets but he
saw something golden when nobody cared. He walked on.
He flagged down a car and bared his long teeth, the passenger screamed
and ran out to escape what she saw.
She called for blue lights and pointed him out, tried not to shout,
but panic ensued as he ran, and was chased.
This was the part where the victim refused to stand silent again
amidst growing concerns sifted out by the watcher of man, the police.
As wrists became chained, he smelled the concrete, gave a sigh of relief
and allowed for his passion to be, subdued.
A cry for less freedom was the last thing he could shout, as he fell asleep
and planned to sleep in ‘til he died.
The death among men that seemed noble at first, became second place to the
cries of his feverish dreams, that seethed out.
To take place in a world where nothing is true, except for the fact that it’s not,
became something hard to withstand against gravities press
and the faces that pressed on the glass, of his train.
Going to nowhere is going back to where he came, as a moth lifted wings
and shook all of his dreams to their core, or their husk.
And the cornfields he passed couldn’t grow cause the rain that were tears
wouldn’t fall on the ground that crushed into its mouth,
the sides of the cars that were smashed and had people, spilled out.
“If I could just fly,” he thought as he watched, “I would sit on the ground
and wish that my wings were the cardboard and string that keep me tied up
in the travels, of books.”
“And the seeds of the plants were the dots on the page that ended a thought
or kept me hanging on for what’s next.”
This life wasn’t quite what the monster had hoped it to be when his heart
was a dream that misted itself out the spout, of a whale.
It’s such a shame they were there when he came, all the prophets and men
who stood marveled and true to the words that they knew, that really
were just sounds, they spelled out.
So he woke up in bed, lifted the curse from his head and cast to the ground
the crown that ruled his mind, and he passed on.
A Cut-Up For Crazy
If one is considered perhaps crazy and ready,
he may feel compelled to show how he suffers,
or undergo subtle of even gross alterations.
He may see himself as an idle wealthy woman.
He may blusteringly try to hide his sense,
or his ability to report relevant information.
Should he feel endangered, he may call attention early,
by having a platonic affair with an unsophisticated factory worker.
As a high minimal fee unconsciously discourages the patient
from returning to his treatment.
Reality is Theft
wilting idols built in your lifetime offer hope
a great killing desire
sent by open infinity (fate)
to give some just reason
(never offering, just giving)
for having found other newer altars
risen only to receive praise
(not for praising)
made only to be envied,
Defying the feral narratives
kept wild in passion
which stand by to guide us
(not guard us)
Season’s Debt
summer ends when fall urges winter’s whisper
“Let’s pretend that every creature embodies some new order”
— a gun shot causes alarm
(When no one pulled the trigger)
— rising smoke clouds vision
(Which way will end us sooner?)
Decision one way, sends faith down the other
(the Prophets never wrong)
Often people listen eager
to only what they hear.
When summer chills, bringing death
what patterns will cross over?
North Four
In so many heads resides time.
This order imposed on human minds
preaches control
killing all who take special practice
at searing comfort from the stony ground.
This burning outrage wore against my understanding.
to understand and not accept equates to friction.
every bone found weight to be excessive
and thus my presence began to fade.
So for as long as it takes to raise an island,
I sat motionless, save for breathing.
The Mind left out fragments of reality
my Dulled Sense, often captured and entranced,
shivered in revolt and vowed not to rise again.
Segno Di Dio
“If you make another racket,
I’m gonna send you back without
an explanation!”
You there,
stood alone.
You held your heart against the phone,
seeking intimacy through plastic.
If only your hair could be yanked by hands, invisible and deceptive,
They’d make you make that racket.
Then turn the cord around his neck and yank until he’s breathless.
So swear to this, the cabled phone,
you’ll be gone before its reckless.
Just take the coin that called you there
and buy back one more second.
a thrown stone shatters,
a water glass, which shines the best.
and in tragedy’s strange face, something grabs you before it happens.
and only then does your body melt to celestial milk white light
and you evaporate into stars.
—-
Thomas Burgess is a 24 year old English major at Virginia Commonwealth University and lives in Richmond, Virginia.
