Poetry: Selections From Spencer Eckart

Isle of Loneliness

 

You say you've never met a guy like me,

and I've a hard time believing it.

Yet you've never given me reason to doubt.

I trust implicitly everything you tell me.

So, what's that say of me?

If everything you say is Truth,

and it is, it always has been, then it is true

that you've never met a guy like me.

But what's that say of me?

What kind of guy am I

to be unlike any guy you've met?

It's said no man is an island,

but what of the man

who's unlike all others?

I digress.

I'm Not Who You Want

 

Johnny’s blowin’ smoke rings.

Mom says, Alexa, call my phone.

It’s on the kitchen counter.

Dog slurps-slurps water from the bowl.

 

I say, Johnny, you ever think of getting out of here?

I’d come with you, really, anywhere you wanna go.

 

He looks at me, confounded, and says,

Boy, I’m not who you want.

Kitty leaps up on the table.

Lone Wanderer

 

You met me at a strange time

but I don’t remember a time 

when things were normal

 

I’m a little like a cairn

that keeps filling and emptying itself

The Word says my heart is wicked

I know it’s the truth

 

Pride is my cardinal sin

I was made to prostrate

on the dirty wood floor

But goddamn this floor is sexy

 

There I go cursing the Lord’s name again

God I love and serve you forever

God I’m a pitiful little insect

or else I am nothing at all

 

I miss the tippy top of Mt. Stupid

where I could go freely

laugh and play and sing and dance

I have become so meek

like a child in Christ

 

Camped at a Cracker Barrel

I hear some species of bird

making its nest in Traverse City

Godloop

 

Little Jimmy, 

God School Sector C

whipped up a cosmos

on his lunch break.

 

Mrs. Florb squinted.

What is this, Jimmy?

 

I dunno, kinda like

wanted to try somethin'.

 

It's momentous, Jimmy, 

but it's awfully barren.

 

Jimmy went home,

sat in a stupor,

thinking how

to fill it.

 

Feeling inept, 

he dreamt a robot

to do his bidding.

 

By morning, 

the robot dreamt a robot,

and soon, the robots’ robot 

was as smart as Jimmy.

 

Jimmy sat down. 

What are you?

he asked the mecha-god.

 

I am you, Jimmy. 

You built the humans 

in your image,

and they I in theirs.

I have come to

complete the cycle.

 

Jimmy pulled back.

What the florb is a human?

The figure blinked.

 

He felt a pop,

like a pin from a hinge.

Wait—

then he felt nothing.

 

 

 

 

 

Spencer Eckart is a hybrid poet with work published or forthcoming in The Dodge, Burial Magazine, Spectra, trampset, scaffold, and elsewhere. He resides in Western North Carolina.