Poetry: Selections from Joseph M. Gant

Yesterday’s Rent

my ass leaks

and the rent’s always late

this is how you become

yesterday’s news

the art of floating

bad checks

is lost on millennials

either way it’s hard to be clean

sober and broke

still looking for the bar

with blinders on

guard

I never liked parties but I’d kill

for just one celebration

before the landlady comes around.

Red Planet

in war for euphoria, everyone’s expendable.

I count again on weeping hands

the casualties I’ve campaigned over,

the bodies in their temporary hours.

          husks and empty eyes and bile

 

everything I miss is a ghost

and will not resurrect-- memories, annular-- and vaguely glowing

shadows of the past.

they mock me in disquietudes

I sweat them in my delta wave

oblivion of night-time prisms

where calls go straight to voicemail

 

there is an infestation of dragons here

eggs of rot-- the flies of time

I rise from sheets of toil, a simple paper sword in hand

to meet chills and eyes, phantasmagoric fire wings and claw.

Phobos, Deimos, and war.

Bookends

your day starts

with a fifteen minute countdown

to panic

it ends

in the farthest corners

of a rabbit hole

you take pills for all the

strung-together moments

that stitch the in-between

they’re prescribed as needed

but they don’t exactly specify the flavor of that need

you fear you’ve grown dependent

and maybe rehab doesn’t sound so bad

people are mostly sympathetic

the rest can fuck themselves

as you project onto a gray and non-reflective screen

get well cards and new-commer chips.

Cold Morning

in the time it takes to end this song

no children will be born

so I sing to stay alive

 

in early days

I ran from the sun

I’m older now and the shadows turn

 

there’s a hair in my hat, and it doesn’t belong to me

there are broken teeth attempting speech

but the voices all seem foreign

like a language I never learned to speak

on purpose

or the way a deaf man shouts

 

I walk to the start of another line

and pause to square my shoulders

 

the yellow dog never leaves

and the landlady won’t make him go

but I never pay rent

so I don’t complain--

I squint from the ears and it’s over

Kuddle

some of us love teddy bears

full of glass and tetanus.

lips of hepatitis

and these lullabies

to sanctum smiles.

we dream away the frost of Winter,

pulling knives from memory

to freeze the blood in sickle veins,

we plunge into the snow.

Joseph M. Gant is a poet, fiction writer, and cyber activist from New Jersey. His creative work has appeared in small presses and academic projects as well as books with Rebel Satori Press. His technical writing has appeared in various cybersecurity blogs. When he's not messing with Open Source and Small Press projects, he is adding to his collection of Pink Floyd bootlegs.