Author: Jay W. Ess

Dream

poetry

I dreamed we were sailing
On a holiday cruise

You smiled under red-framed sunglasses,
My hair stayed blowing steadily in my face and eyes

Your fingers touched my arm
and through The wind and spray I felt whole

But then darkness overtook me;
I must have been thrown overboard

When I awoke, I did so gasping on dry land
Wrapped in the folds of the blanket you gave me

I hope you read this poem

poetry

You are delicate and tender
with a heart too large,
with a soul too beautiful.

You are a whole truth
and a force of beauty;
you are uncontainable.

You inspire and incite
a passion I could not know
before I met you.

Your smile lifts my spirit,
your touch can cure me instantly
of all of my woe and sadness.

But if you need to cure yourself
then I can only waste your medicine.

If you need to stand and soldier
than I can only get in your way.

If you must be alone right now
then I must be alone as well,

and I hope you read this poem,
so you know that I will wither
if it means that you will thrive.

Pride Goes

poetry

I am a proud man
full of virtue, I am sure,
and prone to ignorance

I thrive on the meat
that is selfishness;
I wallow in the ichor
that is my own petulance

I always know better
and if you ask me
I will tell you just that

Never mind that you have
trained your whole life.
Never mind that I have
only read a couple messages
on a message board

I am a proud man
and I am human garbage,
so it should be no surprise
if you toss me out.

if time could travel backwards part five

poetry

I would start over at the beach
with my heart tied in to knots

But I would make every mistake
just the same way I made it the first time
except with a bit more certainty

Even though I would know
I was wrong

I spend time inside
my mind
where It’s as cold as I remember
but I can’t quite see
the ocean from where I sit
so I crane my neck
but I’m at the end
of my literal actual rope
and as sweat beads down my face
despite the frozen breeze
I forget all the love I’ve had
as my muscles bulge larger
and darkness overtakes me

And I know nothing here in this black
so I don’t care when the others come
to take me
even though I would fight
but there’s just no fight left in me
dead like this.

No-One Is Listening

poetry

You are a pirate transmitter in an ocean of unauthorized frequencies
that cascade together creating distortion and static

My receiver picks up on a stray, clear transmission every now and again
so I can piece together your path based on your current bearings and location

I know that you have undertaken a grueling course through dangerous waters
without the help of your officer, who left you and your few crew members for another ship

The most of it, though, is hissing noise washed out by other radios with bigger amps
and one day among the swirling interference, your signal will go cold

Maybe I will notice.
Maybe I will not.

But based on my most recent data
I will be forced to understand, unfortunately,
that you have drowned

And that none of us other broadcasters
had taken enough time from our programming blocks
to help you out at all

Hanna, Or the terrifying and uncanny methods available to the Modern human for uses in communication and documentation, and how even those can not protect a person from developing a rather slanted world-view (and perhaps may even encourage it)

poetry

I would call your phone sometimes
hoping the voice-mail message
at least meant you had been alive
recently enough to pay this month’s bill

When it started to ring
to one of those robots –
an IVR they call them
in the telephone industry – my
sure-shot measurement method
went bust

Text-Messaging wouldn’t do, either;
There isn’t even a robot to give
the common courtesy of a senseless
fleeting hope in the first place

but every now and then I’d get a word
or two, and so at least I knew that
someone was still using your
number

Then it was 2015

and somehow, the telephone slash camera
that I carry in my left-front pocket
started swapping stories with yours

Then, not just spare characters or
a pre-recorded speech, but real
actual photos would appear to me,
for only a moment, as if in a dream

Rather often, you are very nearly smiling

So now I am glad that, so far as my
millesimal view of your days can show,
you are well

but I wonder
if I had dreamt you,
actually,
all along

I wish I was a fighter like you

poetry

With burns and scars
to prove it

Then I’d have my own stories
and wouldn’t have to borrow
so many of yours

the problem with fighters
though, is they have to
keep fighting,
even when they’re burned

or scarred

or scared

or tired

even when it’s hard to think straight,
let alone to keep fighting,
because that’s just what a fighter does

so even though some of those stories
start off rough,
and even though some of them really
end badly,
and even though the best ones
are still tragic in their way

I wish I was a fighter like you

This is a poem about death

poetry

Not about a walkabout skeleton
in a black robe, with a threshing blade
or a plague or a sickness
or a rock-and-roll band

This is about the feeling
that washes over you
as you stand in a room
while another human being
struggles to keep blood pumping
through their veins
even though everyone knows
they should be gone by now

This is that stone in your gut
as you hang up the phone
from hearing the news: someone
whom you loved very dearly
had wrapped a strong rope
about their neck and throat
and tightened it somehow
until they were no longer breathing

Here, now, the dizziness that comes
when you remind yourself
that the phone number you were dialing
no longer connects

Here, the pain of knowing that
nothing you can do can
bring somebody back,
so it’s too late for some things
and all the apologies you owe
will have to go unsaid

This is a poem about death
and it is not romantic
because there is no romance in death

It is not beautiful,
there is no beauty in it either

it is dark and cold
and it is sad

And oh, what a big piece of shit you are

poetry

This time will be different

Just like every other time was

The screws are to me, now

I can feel them on my forehead

and my finger-tops

and just in to my spirit

so I will try to erase a decade of knowing better

I will understand that late is better than never

but I will know that late is failure, too

These screws will make sure I don’t forget

It is October. Wind tears leaves from trees and casts them about in hazy gray moonlight. There are ghosts around every corner. They are always there, but now the air is chilled just so, that you can see them flickering. There is no sound, except the emptying branches chattering above me. The facade of peacefulness is broken, now, by those flickering ghosts. They are sad and alone.

poetry

And with each long breath
I suck them in,
spiraling down my rasped gullet
to my pulsing, flexing guts

These spirits chill me completely,
to the center of my very bones,
and I only hope that for their trouble
they find any warmth at all