None.
Blue seashells over my eyes I call them coins
leave them under the gravestones
that like the old man's teeth
rot in long lines lisping
out old vague drunken songs I don't wish to recall
whatever words were written in our past
I am not connected to the tears that are escaping
from these shells
I want to become the ridges
become the gradients of color on the outside
I no longer wish to pay for living with my sight
Vacant.
conch shell thunder in my ear
hanging from a headphone wire
the empty soundless waves
the coiled marks in the sand
voices rushing up against my eyes
the blackness that comes with setting sun
a constant mirage of images
hollow thoughts refusing a response
isolation against the static storm.
Pumice.
we can not discern the meaning;
standing in the rain outside your window
doing this to myself
soaking my clothes
not wanting to go home
hoping you wouldn't come downstairs
looking for reconciliation
misunderstanding loss
like in some movie decaying on old film
could it have been ten years ago and more?
I have done the impossible thing; I have moved on
i wear a hat outside when it’s clear
you write poems about rain
like it's always raining;
i want to live in the rain but
it is always too wet;
at some point you seek shelter
to warm your drenched skin
but you only catch a chill;
i want the sun to watch the rain
the clouds look too somber;
i can only tell it's raining
by watching the pond boil;
i take my hat off and stare into the sky
the rain is invisible until it covers my face
Further study required
in the wake of forwarded emails
the monitors rose like plastic crosses
each groan of ascension was an echo
a stalled car catching below my window
dyed concrete in the parking lot
the little blue dots unhinged
moved through location space
they had found the white lined way
to predict their destination
they flattened out to become an umbilical cord
a line defined by beginning and end
untethered to skullfaced sockets
there would be no mortality
organic life would begin with cybernetic eyes
glimpsed through application of screen to body
body to settings settings to soul
Tom Pescatore can sometimes be seen wandering along the Walt Whitman bridge or down the sidewalks of Philadelphia's old Skid Row. He might have left a poem or two behind to mark his trail. He claims authorship of a novel the Boxcar Bop (RunAmok Books, 2018) and the poetry travel journal Go On, Breathe Freely! (Chatter House Press, 2016).