Author: Jared Abraham

Authorship is Next to Godliness

poetry

over seven years,
i watched you grow
and watched you learn
what love could be,
and now i return
to your beginning
in preparation to witnessing
your penultimate story;

because i know so well
how it all will end,
i can’t help but wonder
what premonitions you had
and whether you were aware
of your maker’s plan,
just like i hunger to know
God’s plan for me.

laundry day

poetry

put it all in the bag;
it all is filthy
from the accumulated use
of these last two weeks
from everywhere we’ve been
and everywhere we’ve gone
and from when we stayed in
sweating in the Texas heat;

clean out your closet
and find the set of clothes
that you’d been saving out
for just the right time
that never seems to come
before the next laundry call;
so put it in the bag
along with your dreams;

i bring you home a basket
all nice and neat,
folded and ready to be put away,
all snugglable and reeking
of cleanliness and sanitization
so that all of the character
has been washed away
by laundry day.

intimidation

poetry

why i always feel this way
i can’t really very clearly say
for after all you’re just a man
and not very tall when you stand
but whenever i’m in your presence
my mind is filled with interference
and i can’t think of anything to say
to make my reticence go away
which only makes the situation more awkward
as i watch our relationship move backward.

overdone afternoon naps

poetry

slowly returning to consciousness,
confusion reigns,
as my muddled mind tries to sift
through too many thoughts at once,
not coming to any answers
but only being left with
fuzziness, perplexity, and sweatiness,
having no idea how i slept this long
and no idea who i am even,
except that my head wants to explode,
and my eyes don’t seem to work,
and every sound is only white noise,
so that thinking just one thought
takes me nearly as long as it would
a person of normal intelligence.

Mexico

poetry

despite having the best time,
i find a strange ambivalence
thinking about the cost,
not to myself,
no, but to the onlookers,
the waiters and waitresses,
the bellboys and barkeeps,
the deckhands and drivers,
watching me drop in a weekend,,
casually and with unmistakeable style,
the earnings of their entire
month?
quarter?
year?
thinking about what they could do
if only they had the
luck,
chance,
fortune
of a middle-class American.

interview fraud

poetry

you expect to know me
but only spend thirty minutes
prodding and poking
with pointed questions
that don’t really tell you anything
about me or anyone,
other than that i know
(or perhaps not)
what you want to hear
and will gladly tell it to you
no matter what i really think
because i’ll do just about anything
for 40 grand a year and benefits.

slow summer work days

poetry

if i sit here another minute,
i very well might explode,
littering the surrounding computers
with little bits and pieces
of what was once me:
brain matter, bones,
flesh and blood,
and of course fecal matter,
coating the ground
and hopefully making it to the ceiling,
that i might rain down my essence
on friend and foe alike,
bestowing a final blessing
on all these other working stiffs.

old songs and old friends

poetry

sitting for hours
on hard chipotle benches,
barely noticed in the reminiscence
of times past,
of times to come,
of everything in between,
enjoying the moment
although we all know
that it won’t last,
that it will fade away
like a song from the past
that slowly disappears
and then one day is found
on a shuffled ipod
and immediately suspends time
for four minutes or so,
taking everything back
to the idealized past,
in which everything we shared
is remembered fondly,
improving on the reality,
which was good already.

Re-vamped

poetry

i wish that i were a vampire
but of an entirely different sort;
not possessed of boyish good looks
and not one that plays by the books;
not your normal vampire douche
and definitely not from Belarus;
content merely to sleep all day
and drink a little blood along the way;
not worrying about what would happen tomorrow
because i would have known enough sorrow
from living throughout recorded history
but always as an unfathomable mystery.

in praise of introvertion

poetry

my mind is a-clatter with unmentionables,
unmentionables that ring,
unmentionables that sting,
thoughts that should not be spoken,
thoughts that would leave me broken
in the eyes of all those around
if they knew my thoughts underground
but luckily i keep my head,
and the unmentionables stay in a cozy bed
of repressed thoughts and feelings
so that no one has to go reeling.

The circle of life: garage sales (a metaphor)

poetry

lined up in a row just like ducks,
are so many happy, shiny products
that soon lost their shimmer,
lost their shine and glimmer,
and then what is to be done
when all usefulness is gone
but to trot them out on a weekend day
and try to sell them all away
to whomever is in need
or whomever is desiring
of something deemed to be junk
of something that’s been in a trunk,
locked away from the sun’s light
perhaps in an attic closed up tight,
and that will someday face the same fate
passing to the next who thinks it’s great,
only to be sold on again
and again and again and again.

Jazz Club

poetry

open the door and
take the elevator down,
down, down, down, down, down;

into the dark and
the smoke that swirls around,
down, down, down, down, down;

into the past where
that prohibition feeling surrounds,
down, down, down, down, down;

where the music pervades
filling every crevisce with sound,
down, down, down, down, down;

where heads grow light
as drink after drink goes down,
down, down, down, down, down.

the depths of silence

poetry

cast about for words
that don’t seem to come
because there’s nothing,
nothing on the surface to say,
and we don’t want to go
beyond the surface
because if we were open,
really, really open,
then everything would change,
and we would never again laugh together
because the shadow of the depth,
the shadow would always remain,
tinting and tainting our mirth,
striking it away;
so we’ll perpetually sit in silence
until only the silence remains.