Iron Ore, Binge and Purge, others

Here's one of my old poems that I found and messed around with, here's the result:

Iron Ore

Smoke stacks
giant, dormant cigarettes
the only things left standing of an era
that sprouted legs and walked out
with a black lung slung over its shoulder.

Men walking to work the mill,
making smooth metal for big cities.

They let loose on
8th Avenue
big band clubs,
where women who wore stockings
would dance with men who wore suits.

Enter
14th avenue,
mine:

Broken brown glass on lumpy
alley pavement,
because a drunk thinks glass looks good
lodged in stomach lining.
On Amity, in a powder blue slide,
a brownish-red crust.
Blood.

The trees uproot the sidewalk in protest.

Homestead,
Rusting.





I'm kind of a compulsive person. When I'm doing something, I put my whole self into it and if it's important enough I sort of lose myself to it. Here's a poem about it, just wrote it tonight:

Binge, Purge

I said, "exist"
so it did.

Spun on its heel, it looked at me, crooned
here, I'm your child.
Here, watch the purging:

Crack my spine, hand to my collar bone, making sure it's still there.
Still me.
Spitting sour ink,
from a tongue cut out.

Wrap a string around my finger,
it says
"you, you're living."

I'm real?
It's real.




I also sometimes write short little things on my phone, here are two:

From sometime in January:

The stench of stale air, not returned outside for a month
is season with cigarettes. Grey smoke, stationary
a thin fog, a fan idly buzzing in the corner.

From sometime in July:

Yellow painted steel, eaten by rust that makes a rough spot the shape of California.
Rails framing the blue that bestows neon bright,
lights of places named for banks that are going under.
The city's outgrown its strength.