Megan Porter Poetry

Stuck like a cat in a locomotive piston

the notion of a step

gentle out of the strangled light

wrapping around my head like a snake dream

which sliver of mirror fragment reflects me right

Suck the air through your speckled lungs

a gift from endless plastic blade

leather shoes that never seem to stretch

make wonderful ordinary

grateful picked-skin darkness fade

Settled noise from cat-scratch armchair

warm glow from processing blue sky wistful

it’s hard to forgive

the scratchy jumper that leaves you cold

the scalding compass you can’t pick up

see bright the ashen pathways hurtful words outlive

You and me are poetry caressing these lines on pages coarse for gritty eyes squinting another 3AM kitsch cuckoo clock.

                Blur outwards hurtling at baseball walls grip tacky thought-borne sheets that rifle past an awkward aunty highball scorn.

                               Precarious mountain drift casual down to soul heart screaming only idle truth on patterns focused eyes respect.

                                White anointed listless longing fear darkly daggers descending in backs to warn others of haughty cure addicts.

              Pull fickle transitory thoughts from steel cages weighted down by all those things those things told you to be.

You and me are drastic wandering do-nothing bird watchers.

I want to go to Mars.

And among the Martians
my secrets will lie.
Among the lies.

I’ll fight
my demons.

                                                                          A bright orange sky.

Humanity will prosper

                                            Here.

Potato farm
Nursery
Telescope fixed on Earth.
                                                                         Transfixed with Earth.

I’ll look out.

                                         To the stars.

                                                                         Empty space.

                                                                                                                                        Alone.

                                                                          Helmet off.

//.42.[??]// MESSAGE ENDS.

to the waiting-to-die generation. Step back to nature’s fluttering eyes. She shines. Black dog rolling skies. I prise rigor mortis fingers from fading branch. Three times. A punch to the back of the head nightly. He lies. Soul-sucking quicksand claiming bodies for a rotting army. You’re just killing time.

you are becoming predictable, too scared

for padded shoulders, i wondered

was change fixing a rusted letterbox?

it dives below the current, every time

the moon follows me home, light

slapping my face, i can’t care

about stacking shelves with goals,

holding happiness like water in my hands

trickling away.