Poetry: John Maurer

John Maurer

A Waste of Art

 

Oh so messy

I sit in my work

Or lack thereof

For I say I am a poet

So I know the meaning

Of every word but that one

What a laugh

With an Arctic chomp

This tank can make your lungs

Into cold party balloons

A Pittsburgh painter,

Would call this art

Your father,

Calls this a waste of time

You ask,

What’s the difference?

Not sure either

If these pages would be more useful

As tissues for the leaking eyes

Of mothers who choose to keep them

Leeches belong only

In-between survivalist teeth

Or should I become a contortionist

And just put myself on the shelf

It isn’t that I don’t care,

But that I simply don’t notice

The way you don’t even run

Your fingers over my gold embossments

***

One Hundred More

Indication of the intricate is how we can't tell if it's simulated
Intoxicated when I talked in college presentations
on the dangers of drugs and alcohol
The teacher believed it but even funnier is that I didn't

That same week I watched my brother puke away
hours of blood on a beach under the crescent moon
911 pre-dialed but he kept saying not yet, not yet
And he was alright, I'm certainly alright
But I don't need to chase the dragon
the dragon chases me, but he hasn't caught me, not yet, not yet

I wrote this on the walls with Pabst boxes and Swisher wrappers
Built a throne from the tricyclic cylinders I've emptied into myself
Taking shots to suppress the fire licking its way up my throat
They told me to just say no
but I just say one more

***

Eating Western Wheat in the East

I love you        I hate you

right now         soon after

Eyes closed     Well aware

I stare              of nothing

I know             I lie

what’s past      in the grass

 

It's like college kids and collagen

Obsessed with camouflage collages of lives we won't live

At what point do you switch from telling your child

You can be anything

to

You probably can't do most things

 

Like how you let them find out Santa isn't real on their own

Wait and hope they will realize the same thing about god

Hope they never realize the opposite about Satan 

Not literally but figuratively that figure is each and every one of us

There's an evil stirring inside; not dying but killing to get out

One day you will see it in us, someday after you will find it in yourself

***

Bio:

John Maurer is a 26-year-old writer from Pittsburgh that writes fiction, poetry, and everything in-between, but his work always strives to portray that what is true is beautiful. He has been previously published in Claudius Speaks, The Bitchin’ Kitsch, Thought Catalog, and more than seventy others. @JohnPMaurer (johnpmaurer.com)

---

Setu, August 2021