Seth Jani- Three Poems

Seth Jani currently resides in Seattle, WA and is the founder of Seven CirclePress (www.sevencirclepress.com). His own work has been published widely in such places as The Coe Review, The Hamilton Stone Review, Hawai`i Pacific Review, Gingerbread House and Gravel. More about him and his work can be found at www.sethjani.com.

An Empty Afternoon

To not be inspired.
The black hull of the heart
Treading nothing.
The winged vessel of dream
Unable to fly.
And all day
Listening to the wind
Only to hear
The rustle of garbage,
While the noxious chant
Of reason chimes on:
Just atoms, just X,Y and Z,
Just an empty husk
Butting up from nowhere.

 
Digressions  

It doesn’t feel like destiny;
The unexpected turn,
The splintered heart inside,
The dead bird’s weight
Hinged upon the neck.
How strangely we are forced
To turn our visions down,
Touch the earth in pieces,
The infernal underfoot.
The depths shudder,
The spirit understands,
But the body rages over and over.
We are not born to carry our lives
Too high for too long.
They must sink, burrow their noses
In the earth,
Taste the nourishing breakdown
of dirt.
The marginal in us must creep quietly
Towards center stage.

A Haunting

There is a ghost
Butting his head
Against the doorjamb and my heart.

Ephemeral passion.
Snubbed-out candle flame.
Reliquary of light.

It has been there
For two cold nights
And all the while

I have been building
Empty rooms inside my body
To fill with that old, haunted music,

That dead-end wailing,
That momento mori,
That flicker and grief.