Thursday, December 17, 2015

James Diaz- Three Poems


I Don't Know If You Can Read This, But If You Can...

Pressing
down,
the thumb
assaults the blood flow,
inwardly you think: this
is what it must feel like
to be saved,
to be warm
between the elbow and the wrist
to have measured out the gap
between each beat that your heart makes

in the mausoleum
in the auditorium
a dream that you are on display
and late for your own display

“Don't make a scene”
the director says
“be the scene”

“but I don't know how”

“Then get the fuck off the stage”

I remember the first deer
I saw lying dead
how I wanted to crawl down
and kiss its mouth
how I wanted to hold it
until the ambulance arrived
and then the grief
at realizing we aren't meant to save such things.



Come Morning It Will Still Be As Bad As It Was The Day Before

Packed in neatly
where the burden 
that is your face
turns toward the wall
and all who have 
known you incorrectly
for so long
stare at you 
with noncommittal eyes

you want to scream
but there is a promise
of heaven in your throat
and it won't allow you
to be this imperfect
to flare and flash your wounds
as if that is what makes people
who never got it
suddenly get it

suddenly grab you up into their arms
and sing to you
and cry into your hair
the same refrain: I am so sorry
so, so sorry

sometimes a damage is so deep
it is the surface that kills

you close a door inside of your head
the warning light is as dim as the warning
no one ever arrives just in time

and there is no other person in the world who could destroy you
as well as you do.



Response To The Prior Experience Section Of A Job Application

Fasten your skin down
beneath the arid wandering
of truck stops at the edge of the world
blitzed coats of white
snow on the road
whose bible put thorns in yer blood
I got two guns
under the seat
almonds and alms 
and when I pull this car over
I'm gonna start a fire so big 
the whole outskirts of towns will implode
we'll chisel our name in ash
we'll walk it off
cut the line / communication will stink
amber wave riding
this jades the mind
but it's all a trial - trivial
two tone travesty
trellis and wall – overgrowth
left to love in the absence of love,
left to bleed out in the open,
you get the drift,
I get the draft.



Author Bio: James Diaz spends his time writing poetry as if his life depended on it, because it does. His forms of survival can be found in Chronogram, Ditch, Calliope, Cheap Pop Lit, Pismire, Collective Exile, My Favorite Bullet, Commonline Journal, The Voices Project and The Idiom. Do not follow him. He does not like to lead.
 
 

No comments:

Post a Comment