Words of a Poet

“Monday Off”
by Chungyen Chang

Monday, two in the afternoon
a great man was born today.

Alone in this house,
a room painted orange
notebook on salmon-colored pillow.

I hold my breath and listen deep,
a digging sound in the corner of my mind.

Some termite’s gonna dig the ground right up
from underneath me,
carry me to the center of the earth.

There are only two paths from there:
escaping my termite overlords, or
imploding body into self,
recycled into magma chambers.

Ticking clock, a red line
following its path across a round, clear face.
We look into time,
but does time look back?

Outside a child calls
and two blocks away, cars blaze past
sun’s out but my fingers freeze
exposed in winter wind.

I hold my breath and listen deep
by a house which never changes
and the wind can’t reach my still-warm center
wiggling life back into toes.

Beating in the corner of my chest
my eyes an unreliable narrator
in this story of my life
and this is an afternoon alone.

This poem was submitted by C-Squared of Dark is Easy

 ”Barren Wasteland”

Life is like a valley.
A valley from which
carries shadows.
A land from uncertinty
and of the dead.
The smell of fear,
from the far.
A given time to
someone’s end.
Like a waterfall
of dry crusty sand.
Nothing can stand,
the wasted heat.
From this barren wasteland,
nothing can be heard,
except the moans of the dead.
The bones are laid in
a pattern for whom to
come and see.
Life has becomed a desert,
for nothing to live.

-Lukas G. 

“My poems aren’t like usual poems…I like to make people think about what they do and what they can see if the future doesn’t come out like we think it might be like. I know this one is kind of dark and I wrote it when I was living in a RV because Hurricane Wilma had destroyed our house…”