Damian Rucci- Two Poems

AMBER

I’ve been trying to find the muse

in the forests on Maple Place
in the sea-foam of the Bayshore waves
or in jet-streamed blue skies
but
the only time I catch a glimpse
of that bitch is through
the orange prescription bottles
that paints these Jersey towns
in amber apathy
so
I drink with the winos on Broadway—
the old poets who have never written a word
who cast their lines and drink their drinks
waiting for dinner and for

the world to burn

SELL OUT

I still have the fifty tickets
in a rubber-band
in the box beside my bed.

 

They’re from our last
show

 

I haven’t had the balls
to look at it yet
but I know they’re there.

 

I always wonder if I
lift the cardboard lid
will the harmonies we echoed
paint the room in teenage angst?

 

Will I hear the drunken cheers
of the bar crowds in North Centerville?

 

Will the vibrations of half stack
amplifiers make earthquakes beneath my feet?

 

Will my mouth be consumed with the
bitter taste of a day-late-a-buck-short ?

 

I spark a cigarette,
open the damn thing and wince.

 

Fifty tickets in a rubber-band.
An old flannel torn at the elbow.
Wooden shards of a smashed
acoustic guitar.
A broken pick.

 

I take the box and throw
it in the trash.



BIO:
Damian Rucci is a writer and poet from New Jersey whose work has appeared in the Lehigh Valley Vanguard, Five 2 One Magazine,Yellow Chair Review, Beatdom, Eunoia Review and other journals. He is the author of the chapbook A Symphony of Crows and the host of the reading series Poetry in the Port.