“Push Tha Button” by Samurai_PET (deviantART)
Skatterbombed
JCD Kerwin
I will strap dynamite to my chest,
wait,
whisper numbers
from my lips,
and push the button.
Finally,
I will have explored
every inch
of this waiting world.
(September, 2013)
….Get it?
“City of Angels-City of Light” by M Bleichner (acrylic)
El-ay, El-ay
JCD Kerwin
I want Hollywood and a high-rise,
palm trees and SoCal skies.
Wish I could slam beats
into sand
and scream songs
with my eyes closed.
I want the glitter and glam
of rock stars
I wish that I could be.
Wanna walk down streets
reciting poems,
and write stories
in cabanas,
sipping coffee without a coat.
Wish I could stare at stars,
and talk all night with friends
in Santa Barbara bars.
I want to skip across the water,
and tightrope the suspension
of the San Francisco bridge.
Wish I could run across
the country,
leave the mirror behind
and never buy another
again.
(Dec. 2010, rev. Aug. 2013)
About this…I’m not saying I want to up and leave to California.
This is about the fact I have, and have always had, a “travel bug” in me. Ever since I was a kid. I think a lot of writers do. Kinda goes back to the fact we’re all dreamers. I’m an explorer. Always wanted to see and do everything I could. Explore the world…Fight monsters…Slay dragons…All that.
You know what I mean.
Ice on the Rocks, from blog: http://gd-imagesof.blogspot.com
Scattershots from the Clouds
JCD Kerwin
I may stumble ‘neath the weight of these,
these boulders on my shoulders,
but I won’t set them on the earth
to form mountains.
And
I will open wide my arms and laugh,
waiting,
for sneering gods to drop
icicles down from Heaven.
Let them come.
I’ll take the best of all you’ve got.
(August, 2013)
Paul Valery said, “Poems are never finished, just abandoned.” I think that applies to at least half my prose. I write stuff like the nonsense below thinking it somehow looks like a completed piece of work in the end. Maybe it does in some ridiculous metaphorical drunken haze. (Check that, maybe that’s how I wrote it to begin with.)
Maybe all my writing is really poetry in prose clothing. I wonder, then, if all writers are really poets no matter how hard they try not to be? All writers are dreamers, after all. Are all dreamers poets? Are they one in the same? That isn’t to say poets are more “dreamy” than prose writers. I’m thinking out loud. Because I’m a thinker. I’m a philosophicalizer. I like to make up words. Words are fun.
Neon City Lights by dazstudios (flickr)
Neon Daguerreotype
JCD Kerwin
I smell like cigarettes and I’ve got a foul after-taste of something I can’t quite place. I’ve been sitting outside this painted neon disco for far too many hours, watching the wind-up toys move by for one more night.
I frown at the lights and listen to robotic laughter. It’s two a.m. and I watch people break through my vision like I’m flipping through photographs. I miss the way you used to laugh.
I’ve got your picture permanently etched into my memory. I think about it on these kinds of nights, waiting for the scene to turn real. Until it does, I’ll be watching these robots, pretending one of them becomes you.
(Nov. 2011)
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)
J.C.D. KERWIN 