2015-2016 Poetry

Suburban Ponderer

10/1/16

Stop thinking in hooks and phrases and choruses, as if you, a tourist, will become, in course, the king

You, who would return to your home to listen alone to your music on the floor of your room.

The milk is thick as blood.

There's a phrase,

Just think,

The milk is thick as blood,

Just sing,

The milk is thick as blood,

I love it, I feel it,

The milk

As thick

As blood

I feel it.

As thick as Blood.

Stop thinking so damn hard about the words, as if they don't have their own flow.

Stop thinking like you know what's best, as if you won't find out.

You're a stranger in this foreign land, remember that,

You have their phrases, their lingo, their culture,

In a pamphlet in your pack on your shoulder,

Don't act like you'll ever figure it all out,

You've been bewildered, and yet it's been filtered,

You're no city slicker, nor wanderer of wildernesses,

You're just a ponderer.

Suburban Ponderer

Think about it.

Each wonder and quandary,

You wander sidewalks and splits in the mundane,

You're between the real, the rapid and the real, the rural

You're between two solid, polar plains,

You love milk and cheese, but you don't care how they got to you,

You love pop songs and long talks into the night as if the neighbourhood never sleeps,

You wear their couture ironically in love with the textures and patterns...

The milk I drank was thick as blood,

The cheese I eat is thicker yet,

The pop songs, the long talks, the sleepless nights, the darks separate from whites,

How can it be so clear from afar, but when you approach with your microscope or magnifying glass, it turns so quickly to a smudged mass of... Blood, Milk, Cheese.

Like the moon.

You're in the city now.

You hear how they talk to each other and to you.

You don't know if they're being helpful or if they're being rude.

You're not from around here, suburban ponderer,

Think about it.

It's no hook

It's no phrase.

No chorus could contain a single phase through which they raise their sold souls.

This is no monarchy.

Nor democracy, nor republic,

This is an anarchy,

Accidentally put to order by an eager media.

There is no king nor queen, nor president nor despot.

Just whims.

I'm about to eat a bowl of ice cream

Does anyone here hear-- really hear --when I cry out?

I don't do it out loud. Mostly.

In an open field,

Or a church parking lot,

Or on the city street,

In faces, at children and the elderly,

No one hears

Like pop on the radio.

Whose monarch has no heart?

I'm about to eat a bowl of ice cream

And I would have a glass of milk if I had a glass

And it would be about as thick as blood

Or less

I don't really know.

But I like how it feels

Like a pop song you hear but never buy.

Or buy but never hear.

There's no hook. No phrase. No verse nor chorus.

To rule them all.

To ring in their hearts.

You're from another world. Between they and them.

The milk, the clothing, the songs are familiar.

But you're not from around here.

And you never will be.

With no heart, and your taste for blood.