Tag Archives: poetry

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22 August, 2013

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poetry, self-portrait, storyteller, writing

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City of Angels

“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.

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21 August, 2013

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determination, poetry, self-portrait, storyteller, writing

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Scattershots from the Clouds

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)

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18 July, 2013

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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)

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18 July, 2013

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Fly by Fire

Fireflies on water by Yayoi Kusama

Free Fall
JCD Kerwin

Maybe someday I
can make the city
burn with words,

but all I really
want to do
is  fly.

(July, 2013)

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8 July, 2013

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poetry, spoken word, writing

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Back Door Theology in a Whiskey Glass

**Disclaimer: Contains R-Rated and otherwise controversial content**

Back Door Theology in a Whiskey Glass
JCD Kerwin

I caught snowflakes on my tongue
once upon a time in July,
when the air cut like razorblades
and eggs fried on my brain.

I saw Jesus in a snowflake
when I was seventeen
and Jerry Garcia in a peanut
at twenty.
They both said the universe
isn’t all that large
and Andromeda is not that far
away.

At twenty-five I’m still thinking
about Jesus crackers
and pot leaves
fighting over the world.

I think God is a heroin addict
and It’s laughing at Man
running around with palm leaves,
and back-seat-driving Pope-mobiles.

(I think the Pope and the Queen
go fucking on the weekends
because the Devil makes them
do it. After all,
It’s got candy that’s enticing
to all us lollipop kids.)

I can’t seem to drink enough
to become an alcoholic,
but I’m still too inebriated
for AA to accept me.
I’m chasing horses out of bottles
lining shelves of “just another pub”
in some weird corner of my world,
and I’m not sure if this time
God will take a moment
to join me.

Lord fucking knows
I could use an omnipotent psychiatrist
like God
to sort through the mental shit
I’ve shoved in dingy closets
upstairs.

I don’t believe in angels
but if I did, I’d tell you
one has Irish eyes that glow blue
when they’re laughing, and
they saved my fucked up soul
from monsters in my head.

(Those monsters would make me
their marionette if I let them, but
when my Indigo turns Blue
they stay away and I don’t have to pray
to Jesus Garcia.)

And maybe if there’s Heaven,
it’s right here on Earth,
trapped between the Nowhereland
and Almost There that we’ve created.
They’re our excuses for Paradise,
but maybe Eden’s not man-made;
maybe you can’t find it in peanuts
or grape juice at the altar.

(I don’t care to know ‘cause I know
it’d just frighten me and
I’ve got enough things to be afraid of
looking in a mirror.)

I’m content to walk beside
the same jackass human beings,
because maybe someday
it will all make sense to me…

And I think Jerry might be smilin’,
snortin’ coke with Jesus,
while I’m down here laughin’,
‘cause I found an angel and Paradise
before them.

(April, 2011)