Had something. Then I didn’t. Then I did. Still not sure. All I know is I was mad/upset about something at the time. Also, “fly” ‘cos its usually considered insignificant, but a dragon isn’t…Yeah…Get it? I tried.

And I this still needs work.

Waltz of the Flydragon
JCD Kerwin

I pound fists against the wasteland like I’m beating out the reflection on the windowpanes, the reflection I don’t want to see that the world keeps shining back; the one I want to make fade into a thousand shattered Neverwases and Yestermemories. I phantomdream. I phantomdream in the claustrophobic every days, silently dreaming everyone’s pandemic voices into some sort of half-assed remedy for the moment’s pain. I make-believe. I make-believe of happy fucking butterflies and hackneyed, skipping stones gallivanting across Walden pond made tepid and trivial in every grownup’s dead and buried imagination. Maybe I will take a boat and sail, stop and drop an anchor, and wait until the whole damn vessel sinks. The dead water to carry us home like all the ships before.… (The sea maiden and me: We will dance in suspension like the frost fish.)

But I am not finished.

I light up cities and jump-start my own heart, shouting at gods like I’m Oblivion. I will stare at you with glowing irises, like I am captured, freeze-framed in the night by a thousand spotlights. Catch your own lost dreams within my eyes; count your memories and fairytales within the spark. I make supernovas collide. But someday when I’ll dance on cosmic stars, you won’t see because you never opened your eyes. My heart will skip beats and you will miss it when I leave the room, miss it when I grab hold of whatever dragon I dug from whatever faraway mountain I dreamed, once upon a time.…

Now I inhale, breathe ink dust, and explode.

(August, 2013)

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jcd kerwin

Posted on

18 July, 2013

Posted under

determination, poetry, self-portrait, spoken word, writing

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Stardust

Apparently I was having a self-pity fest when I wrote this.

The Crab Nebula in Taurus, courtesy ESO

Stardust
JCD Kerwin

sometimes i find myself
standing waist-deep
in linguistic shit.

i never said i wanted to be like Kerouac,
or Ginsberg reading Eliot and
cracking jokes to a strung-out William Lee.

i just wanted to hold something up to glass eyes
worth more than dilapidated statues
torched and tagged in my mind.

i saw my whole future once
in a pocketful of sand,
but i let it blow away in words
i heard when i was young:

You’ll never be a wordsmith star.
And Bradbury wouldn’t care how far
You want to go.

i can’t form any semblance of sentences
when my mind’s an opium den
of ego-hipster’s ten-dollar words
i don’t fucking recognize.
the stuff i spew must only equal
a pot of verbal diarrhea no one
wants to hear.
i write the shit i know
and that’s the law i live by.
but that ain’t gonna do
when no one cares for
the dream i stupidly built in play-doh
when i was nine.

city lights can’t give
hope to a broken country kid
with nothing worth to give.
or at least that’s what the corporate jokes say
when i let them tear my heart and say
“no thanks.”
and you know, i think they’re right—
i’m an idiot to think
my scribbles will save the world.

(‘cause words are the only thing
that defines our world and
tie us to each other;
but words can break you
and make you feel
like you are nothing.)

it’s damn hard to be strong
when the person you’re afraid of
is yourself.
i’m the only one
who hates and loves
what literary vomit
scratches paper from my pocket
full of stars.

i’d suck a stick and sit
with left-over writers
wreaking of bourbon and cigarettes
if it meant
i’d get
some reaction to the pity
i give myself.
(it makes me want to shove
a pen into my eye.)

but i’m on autopilot;
i still try.
i follow heroes in my mind,
even though i know
they’re made of stardust i captured
when i thought i caught my wish
somewhere back in time.

(Spring?, 2011)