John Compton (3 poems)
september fragments & other things on a monday
our arms will remind you about time,
if you remember my existence.
don’t crush ice for faster results -
the gentle melt will retain cold longer.
320 pm: the weather tore the porch
in years, the grey bones bow.
the nails, rusted freckles, hangnails
clip the flesh. 322 pm and the fly hasn’t figured
how to crawl through the window.
the room has a quiet whisper
from the television behind a door.
something is dangerous to ride.
i am not afraid of north korea. their warheads
which bring passion and fear.
i don’t believe trump’s propaganda.
325: my coffee has avoided steam.
it came to my cup the temperature of my tongue.
salt & sodium are similar but altered:
diamonds and zirconium.
the brine of the body. coal, but more beautiful.
the leaves look weary in the sun. it is september.
there is no longer o’clock. the age of technology.
autumn has become fall. it’s easier.
i understand how to become lonely.
eventually it converts to the simplest thing.
sex has evolved to twinks and whores
and thirty-one years old, i am neither: too old
even for the elder. too ugly. too complicated.
love & commitment. taboo.
[sylvia’s lioness] cut
what a lioness and cub,
blue eye and brown -
you sit there quite chill
except for that stare.
of fur,
fabricated with paint:
bronze medal
than that clump white.
little curious
the audience of weeds.
hands made still,
fingers taunt the hair.
straight from the canvas
the brush stroked life
erratic things suffocate
to bring rare beauty
to the sight:
one million little lines,
one million little lies.
what god made you?
with their imagination
to cultivate such beasts
into existence.
the bleak
feeling,
wild yet careful:
mother.
the both of you see,
i realize,
me watching you.
the helplessness
in pause -
a transition -
confused me with the eerie
pondering...
how do you go
from a boundless originality
to such a frozen
sadness?
[ anne sexton at home reading wanting to die ]
anne sexton's lips curl up
to suicide, like a candle to be blown out
the excitement flares and melts her tongue.
her kind words with dying
not once, but twice -
now, how it too has turned its back.
the way her fingers trail her face
right before her eyes eat
her immortality.
John Compton is a 33 years old gay poet who lives in kentucky. His poetry resides in his chest like many hearts & they bloom like vigorously infectious wild flowers. He has published 1 books and 4 chapbooks: trainride elsewhere (august 2016) from Pressed Wafer; that moan like a saxophone (december 2016); ampersand (march 2019) from Plan B Press. his latest chapbooks: "a child growing wild inside the mothering womb" from Ghost City Press will be published 6/16 & "burning his matchstick fingers his hair went up like a wick" from dark heart press will be published in the summer (2020).