The Knight vs. a Swamp Monster by vegasmike (deviantART)
Between the Words and Under the Bed
JCD Kerwin
I fight monsters
in the nighttime
while you
remain afraid
of the sun.
(June, 2013)
With Wooden Swords I Slay Monsters
Neverland Seas
Seashells by Ira K
Into the Dark Sea
JCD Kerwin
Ira was a man I once knew who wore seashells in his hair. He smoked cigars until the vapors clouded around his dread-locked head, and he told once-upon-a-times to us town kids. Ira believed the stars were really fireflies. “They’re the brave ones that done flown too high. Got stuck up there and now they shine all night,” he said.
Ira was a man I knew who made a boat and sailed across the sea. “I’ll see you ‘round now,” he said to me. He was a magic man on a paper ship, off to find a neverland of our dreams. “If you are good, I’ll send for you someday.”
I watch fireflies now and wait. He left seashells on his porch. I kick them into rain puddles.
(June, 2013)
It’s Raining Likely and my Batman Clock is Broken
What? It is. Needs a new battery. I digress.
Phony
JCD Kerwin
He quotes passages from Catcher in the Rye and calls himself Holden at midnights when he’s drunk his head too full of bourbon. He acts tough to hide his self-inflicted wounds, but he’s afraid the world sees right through him. His zealousness convinces him to hit on the older girls, but then he thinks of her and all the ways he hurt her. Sometimes he curses to himself because he doesn’t like remembering the mistakes he made.
He goes to the bar to find reasons for all the things he never did or shouldn’t have done. But the only things he finds are empty beer bottles and girls that will never be her.
He can’t smile when he spies himself in the mirror behind the bar; he can’t face his own reflection without cringing. He wants to gouge out his eyes so he doesn’t have to see, because the face in the mirror just can’t be his.
What he’d give to rewind time.
He’d take it all back and throw himself in the fire he started between them. He’d give up giving into the world and disappear with her. Now he tries to find that place to hide because he doesn’t want to be anywhere now that she’s gone. He can’t remember what it feels like to belong.
He scoffs as he wonders why he cares so much. No one cares this much. He’s not supposed to care. But he does, and it’s why he plays the same songs ten times in a row, hoping the eleventh is when he’ll have an epiphany. It’s why he drinks coffee in the park, wondering if drinking her favorite pick-me-up will call her back.
He tried to get her back, but he’s not a valiant knight; he’s just like the other ego-driven anti-heroes who call themselves “Caulfield” when they’re too full of self-pity to realize they’ve lost.
He might never find the answers he needs, and probably won’t find a way to be with or without her. If she came back, though, he knows they’d be all right. He’d say sorry and she’d forgive him. There’d be no more pretending and no more drinking in bars. There’d be no more Holden at midnights; she’d call him Brian at noon again.
(Dec., 2011)
There’s a Hurricane in my Coffee
Haircut
JCD Kerwin
I grab the scissors with both hands,
and hold the blade between my fingertips
to see if the blood will make
my hair a deeper shade of red.
I have styling gel in my eye
and it’s turning my corneas to fire,
but I’ll simply wait to see
if it’ll make my irises turn grey.
I wish haircuts were plastic surgeries,
so my former self could be
swept away with the tiny piles
of scraps upon the floor.
Maybe I’ll go blonde.
(Dec., 2011)
Being Artsy
Day-Glo Flow
JCD Kerwin
I beat myself with brushes ’til
watercolor splashes from
my ears, and my hair
drips with the colors of
some acrylic pigment
I never knew existed.
I stare at canvases
until my heart beats a red
I saw once upon a time
in Nat Geo photographs
of a sunset Nevada Babylon.
My dreams are black and white,
but sometimes dots of color
fall across the page:
sunspots on the movie frame
of my Bladerunner landscape;
reflecting a never-ending,
water-techno-color sky.
I’ll reminisce and catch my breath
’til I paint the clouds at Dawn,
and fade into nothingness at Noon.
Or, maybe I’ll fall into the river,
mix into those liquid, color lines,
and that old, used-up turpentine…
Or, maybe I’ll wake up and find
it’s all just a boring tube of white.
(April, 2012)
J.C.D. KERWIN 