Poetry: Selections from Sammy T. Anderson

MY GOD BURIES ME IN AGONY

My God wraps his hands around my throat, suffocates me to start. 

Tears my mind from my own hands and throws it to the dark. 

My God is whittled in nowhere, 

carved from the unseen gray. 

Anonymous to the simple lives 

he won’t bother with today. 

My God is alive with fury, 

his refuge is my eyes, 

and so heavy lies this crown of his the burden becomes mine. 

My God buries me in agony, 

all hope usurped by question. 

Suffocated by the present tense, 

perfect dark exchanged for Heaven.

 

 

 

A KINDA VILLANELLE AS MESSY AS OUR LIVES 

I could tell the whole truth, but why bother? 

Now, heed the hark of fantasy, cuz 

our lives are just stories we tell each other. 

Hard to separate one from another. 

Can’t recall whether reality was... 

I’m sure it’s the truth, but why bother? 

We said life ain’t worth dyin over, 

bondin in darkness we called love. 

(At least, that’s what we told each other.) 

Tightrope walkin the edge of forever, 

lamentin lack of reality’s buzz. 

It never came, so why bother? 

Too stupid to feel anything but clever. 

Fate hoppin, barn stormin, similarly Oz, 

lookin for stories to tell each other.

Six blocks away, you’re fallin further, fantasy bleedin on pictures of us. I could beg it away, but why bother? Death was a story we kept for each other.

 

 

 

THE THOUGHT OF BLISS 

I might never be closer to dying than now – although, I won’t, 

and, I know that. 

It’s an idle threat thrown at myself to pull me together. 

Some strange vision of a future without me. Trying to force feed my way 

to success. 

“Do it, or else.” 

“This time or that’s it.” 

But, it’s never it. 

Never the end. 

They’ll say family is the reason. 

Jesus. 

Good friends and dogs. 

None of that has kept me alive.

Something else. 

The thought of this. The thought of bliss. Something. 

That I might be 

something. 

More than anything else, that has kept me going.

 

 

 

TO MAKE OF TIME 

Things don’t change over time, they move in a flat circle 

around my head. 

Three years blink and I am still here. The same. 

Even if the photographs and memories and blank sheets of paper 

disagree. 

Head still spins. 

World still turns. 

And, I am still sitting here with a pen trying to figure out 

what to make of time.

 

 

 

PLAY NICE 

And 

all those who believed in me I’ve proved them wrong again. Now 

I’m right back where I hated begging life to just begin. 

Take me back to when the weather wasn’t burning hot with ice. Tell my Mother 

that I love her 

even when I don’t play nice. Cuz’ 

I don’t know nothin 

about nothing and 

I confess. 

I’m just an artist

and an artist 

can’t protest 

this world 

because these people do their best. 

So, 

I think of where we were all in jest. 

Put smiles on my scars, forget 

all the rest. 

Evil 

has a way of making light of the past. 

But, 

it can’t last. 

No,

it can’t last.

 

 

 

 

 

Sammy T. Anderson is a writer and filmmaker from Indiana. His work has been featured in Dream Noir, Armstrong Literary, The Chamber Magazine and elsewhere. He lives with his wife and three dogs.