Noel Negele- Three Poems

From The Worn Out Jackets, Shoulder To Shoulder In The Bar

And if you see us propped up

Against the bar like eternal scarecrows

Inside your expensive clothes

With your bright dentures like parading armies

Of mockery in your mouths

Do not hurry and judge us—

Life stories that you don’t know

Or do not understand

And if we seek compassion with our fists

On each other’s faces, do not be alarmed

We are only handing out gifts

And do not be afraid of our scars

They are only wrinkles around our souls.

Maybe your bridges don’t curve

And your mornings are filled with smiling faces

While we deal with our hangovers and our guilts 

Surrounding our heads like carrions, eager to descent

Do not think for a second that you know something

We don’t,

Death has consumed our meaning like a dog

Sinking into a quicksand, our loved ones have come

And gone and are not likely to return—

And do not think that all human ingredients died in us,

They have only faded a little, put to the test daily

As we still smile kindly at children, and we all laugh

At times, maybe with the same jokes that you do.

Older Than Young

The days roll away

Like coins slipped

From the pockets

But with not enough

Worth to chase them

Down the pavement

A howl is heard each night

A dog barking with its tongue

Cut off—

Everything is a birth 

Of something worse

Each day a grapple for 

Survival against people

If your left hand 

Goes numb

It’s a heart attack

Ready to happen

If your head hurts

It’s a blood clot

Don’t yank your face off for them

They will stick it to the piss wall

Use it as a target for darts

And do not rip your heart out,

Do not lay it down for them

No one is going to kneel before it

and gently bring it back to you.

It Goes

Strolling around, drunk and coked out of your mind

With mean friends also drunk and coked out of their minds

Talking with a fast paced manner

About things they do not care

And they don’t even pretend to listen

But you keep at it, eyes wide open

Hands moving in effort

To make visual explanations about

The uselessness that comes out of your mouth

As they shit through their mouths too

Strolling around in the night

Under a sky as black as oil

Menacing, drunk, coked out of your skull

Fighting often, annoying rat of a man

So much less from what they expected from you

To be

And then you stay in for days

Stay alone for days

As the phone rings inviting you

To awful escapades

That will continue to spread the numbness

Like an epidemic into your life

So terribly alone

That you become absolutely romantic

Bothering old lovers that have moved on

A long time ago

And of course you shoot at it again

Aiming for deliverance

Actually talking to women honestly

Desperately in need for actual contact

But the music is too loud

The lights too dim

And all they want to do is dance

And take ecstasy 

So you take some ecstasy too

And you lay yourself on the railroad

Watching at the starless sky

With no romance, no hopes

No needs anymore

Just an awful grin on the face

Dazed and comfortable

Listening to the trains 

like instruments of music.