These are from my upcoming poetry collection, False Vacuum (and yes, I will fix the cover soon).
Anachronangst
and I’ll never know how it felt to see the moon landing as it happened
and I’ll never know what it was like to be at a Bowie concert
and I’ll never have lived without online games
and I am preceded by chat rooms
and I am the product of my times
and time is a river. Generations of us come and go
all swimming downstream, all sharing a fraying timeline
the same village the same fete/fate
and bumping into old flames, our edges curling
the dull autobiogs inside us add a new note to the margins:
“All I want is to push out a little further.”
and little me would stare at the stars hoping
for some time-displaced future self, successful and considerate
who might fall backward, sealing the loop that got me out of that place:
“We’ve gotta get out of here!”
but it never happened. He never showed up
instead I’m here with the Anachronangst
and the train doors have closed
and I’m not my older self yet
something transitional
And now the second
Swarmfeel
I can feel the darkness falling
spikes of icy voices slicing through
like a star’s explosion
puncturing the ash-filled sky
with glitter and limelight
and then there’s the neuro-thump
the obsidian punch of grief
a dull thud in the morning
as hurried news
fractured and fragmentary
spreads out from the core
to extremities,
like the wings of some demon
its tendrils cutting through
and where these things merge
is a disconnecting and a dissonance
and a severance
and I am a heavy net of senses, hauled
and dredged from the depths
but not together, not any more
just a swarm of something
the un-building of a storm cloud now
my only comparable shape
(a thing which is not a thing
but a falling apart waiting to happen)
Please leave a comment below so I know what you think