 |  |  |  |
The Poetry Warrior (c) Abigail Beaudelle - 2008.
All Poetry and artwork (c) the respective artists.
All Poetry and artwork (c) the respective artists.
I Must've Looked Like An Asshole
Mathias Nelson
It was a cloudy, cool day
when I went to Riverside park
to look at the water, the big blue
bridge, seagulls calling: popcorn.
The man parked behind me, lobbing
his salty snack over his car roof
to the squawks of junk food hunger.
My cigar tasted good, made my head
light, my thoughts drift like sheer
black water, not too intimidating,
when the ash fell in my lap, landed
right on my pack of mini-cigars
and I, reflexively, so as to not start
on fire, jerked the pack toward the window,
accidentally tossing about ten cigars
down on the wet asphalt, followed by
the ash rain; and the gulls left
the man's popcorn to dive upon my smokes,
claws out, screaming: new food.
Thus, through my rearview I watched
the man squeezing and stroking
his steering wheel as they picked
at my tobacco. He was bald,
looked like a cancer patient,
so I scratched my mop
and drove off.
Mathias Nelson
It was a cloudy, cool day
when I went to Riverside park
to look at the water, the big blue
bridge, seagulls calling: popcorn.
The man parked behind me, lobbing
his salty snack over his car roof
to the squawks of junk food hunger.
My cigar tasted good, made my head
light, my thoughts drift like sheer
black water, not too intimidating,
when the ash fell in my lap, landed
right on my pack of mini-cigars
and I, reflexively, so as to not start
on fire, jerked the pack toward the window,
accidentally tossing about ten cigars
down on the wet asphalt, followed by
the ash rain; and the gulls left
the man's popcorn to dive upon my smokes,
claws out, screaming: new food.
Thus, through my rearview I watched
the man squeezing and stroking
his steering wheel as they picked
at my tobacco. He was bald,
looked like a cancer patient,
so I scratched my mop
and drove off.
The Human Deficiency
I'd like to talk to every soldier
that ever laid dying on an active battlefield,
bullets ricocheting, bombs exploding,
mortars of mortality
whoring upon broken bowels
spilling across knees, hearts
pounding, pushing lives out
faces smeared with sweat dirt bile
screaming for morphine, bawling,
praying to a God they were unsure of.
This kind of pain, it draws the lord out
of mankind, for they know some thing
had to have created this—
this terror.
I'd kneel at their rocking sides
clutch them each by the forehead, squeeze
and ask, "Why? Why did you go to war
in the first place?"
"I . . . why I," they'd spew crimson
on my tense forearms as I dug thumbs
into their temples, "I never fucking
imagined."
I'd like to talk to every soldier
that ever laid dying on an active battlefield,
bullets ricocheting, bombs exploding,
mortars of mortality
whoring upon broken bowels
spilling across knees, hearts
pounding, pushing lives out
faces smeared with sweat dirt bile
screaming for morphine, bawling,
praying to a God they were unsure of.
This kind of pain, it draws the lord out
of mankind, for they know some thing
had to have created this—
this terror.
I'd kneel at their rocking sides
clutch them each by the forehead, squeeze
and ask, "Why? Why did you go to war
in the first place?"
"I . . . why I," they'd spew crimson
on my tense forearms as I dug thumbs
into their temples, "I never fucking
imagined."