TASTE MY GAME: a poetry collection — Poems Nine and Ten.

UNHINGED. (NINE)
Paul’s his name and I’m unafraid of it.
Paul could never imagine how badly
I wanted to enjoy myself – but instead
I remained held up inside my head, sadly,
But he knew me enough to know that
I’m just too hard to know.
I would tell him, “I wish for once I’d just
let the seconds be what they are –
and rid my brain of idyllic delusions
while I simply realize that reality is there,
it’s mine – and it certainly always had its way with me
So, why can’t I have the same power?
I don’t know.

We lied together on a couch and he told me that he wanted me.
I asked him “do you really, though? Do you really want me?”
I found it possessive and I still let him cross all of the lines.
Sometimes Paul’s smile was better than any response
with lots of words, words.
Two of us, tall, dark, and handsome –
Yet I’m stuck in the angles of this triangle as my brain
must always invite itself in.
Trust me, boy, you don’t even like me, let alone want me.
You can see the ugly edges as the image begins to pour out
and I can’t keep everything attractive and social any longer.
Static – it’s all I am. Static, the noise, the unchanged
self trapped in a boundless midnight sky –
They all get sad when they realize I will always be unhinged.

Dead or alive, I will thrive alive inside of my head with
my unerring need to analyze that will outlive you all.
You can try to kill it, shut up its noise.
But you’ll only be frightened to see that
my thoughts are raging and invincible
and my calibrated calculations of those who want me
are immortal and unworldly, strange.
The damn things will resurrect without any ritual –
They’ll just liven to come back for more
and leave me nothing, they leave me unwanted.

ABSTRACTIONS (TEN)
Mend the severed cord
Cut from all of its warmth and left
Writhing to dust on the ground –
Desiccation into these days that are
Congruent with other days.
Minutes multiply like how a mirrored wall
Will create an image of infinity
As they form into the structure of hours
The hours, hours, hours that will, of course,
Become days
Filled with time and its space.
I’m caught in the middle where I own
my very own time zone.
Things happen here you’ll never see.
Slap me in my face – slap my identity.

TASTE MY GAME: a poetry collection — Poems Four through Six.

i was left to rye out your words (FOUR)
Cross my path and cross my heart
Render it to perfection with such bright little surges
of flickering specks of glinting hope –
Maybe your company wasn’t all that I was wishin’ for
Because I could have been entirely here for myself –
The one static person who’s anyone but you.

My hands stiffen into a clutch around my drink
A neat whiskey that settles deeper in the glass
Seething in its piss yellow stink.
I’m reminded of a familiar moment when
I really believed in a person that was real – warm flesh & blood
That could walk into a room to arrive and satisfy my sullen smile.

Except, now, I’m left with July nights that will soon
accumulate to where there aren’t any more –
But a calendar month passed into an August’s burst and bloom.
I calculate more blanketed, quiet nights
Where my sighs of relief will be singular noises in a dark room.

Pathfinder (FIVE)

I’m the one condemned to be slutty, moribund and flirty
Therefore your vices call to abandon a boy like me –
I’m the kind you can desert.
What else can I do with my father’s good looks and my
Clean-shaven face? I can’t help it that I’m a good kisser,
I’ve just always been a natural.
You only sit before me in an assay of my judgments –
Not a fair game when all’s you can claim is the
Tired, bored, glib boy who thinks he’s a man,
Yet he’s not really one at all, he always just stays the same.
Virtues and vices really just squeeze you dry
with your vice’s vice-grip –

It’s easy for me to see it all pouring from you.

Yeah, you’ve heard the talk correctly. I’ve been around.
Ventured many places and
strange apartments, yet your terrain’s a place I won’t
afford to ever give a trip.
I’ve been to it before: it’s a place where I could never get lost –
there’s too many directions – a predetermined, mapped-out
exploration that’s easily explored
just as it’s also the easiest route taken.

Dispassion (SIX)
You’ve got nothing against me,
Yet nothing for me, either – and this leaves me
Unsure of which matter is worse.
Don’t promise me a damn thing ‘cuz I just don’t need
to get my hopes up – what you make predictable
is also equally cruel and unjust. So, I just beg you
to politely tell me lots of lies, lies, and lies
and then leave me alone with them, quietly with make-believe
until it will really make me believe.

TASTE MY GAME: a poetry collection — Poems One through Three.

“sucker-punch” (ONE)
(I)
I woke up today in this city – tired and uninspired.
My nerves, searing like little stringed branches of hot iron
glowing in a faint orange that burns and settles into a deep red, dried blood.
Today, I just can’t take it any longer.
Please, now I finally want my
Gratification – and it can’t be delayed
any longer.
It turns out that everything’s the same
because nothing changes if nothing changes.
I’m alive, hung-over, emptied out by that empty glass –
I’ve been drained dry
Down to the ice gathered in the bottom of a glass, clinking around until
it will inevitably melt.

(II)
Oh, yes, again, it was the same old thing – the
Stupid sentiment that sucks in a sucker like me for
a good, hard sucker-punch right in my gut –
where I feel everything there is to possibly feel.

Once there were things I cared about – remnants and
artifacts that I clutched onto – because they reaffirm that
something powerful was once truly possible for me
and in the stir of my solace, my reverie – I know it’s the right thing to do &
I carry on
with these
pieces, things, particles
into my very own next special
moment that glides seamlessly into my next –
and objects’ weight become lighter and lighter.

“like roadkill” (TWO)
My feeling for you, boy, is rotting right in front of me like roadkill
hot under the midday sunlight – to show you that
all that I could have ever wanted
was ran over and left instilled with the indention of one, long tire mark.
Its surface is now sunken in so’s all you can see is what’s dead and still.

I drove over it and left it for you with a strange new strength surging in me
Yeah, I just might cry & plea before I flee, but I’ll still just walk away
In the opposite direction from where you turned around to leave.
I left it all dead so there’s not anything left for you to ever really see.

“Boundless as the Dark” (THREE)
This boundless black absence between us is more space
than either of us needed.
I can’t kill the void by murdering my thoughts for my feed –
Please don’t bore me with any laments and tangents intangible
Your need for my change came sooner than it should’ve –

Look me in the eyes!
I’m your very own renegade and my plight can’t ever die!

Our time is always measured by your short leash.
Just pull me closer to you again, because I don’t have the guts to grab you
and say what ought to be said.
All’s I can say is goodnight, baby, goodnight.
And I beg for our broken fragments to start forming together,
beginning to mend the night.

TASTE MY GAME: a poetry collection — Preamble-ramble/Intro.

First thing’s first: Here are 10 (ten) finished poems from a collection I’ve just finally rendered enough to end.  Concision, as a concept when writing, is vital, and you must make it the first priority before publication — so here, I’ve done my best.  Mostly everything from this collection is derived from many individual poems I’ve written over the past two years.  Lots of fine-tuning and reinvention went into these pieces & made them what they are right now.  I am excited to share from this collection in particular.  This collection is titled “TASTE MY GAME — a poetry collection — City Boy is Dead” — which is somewhat of an end/death to my previous poems called “City Boys” which thematically explore the nightlife of several Midwest cities I’ve experienced crazy nights in (Kansas City, St. Louis, Chicago, Minneapolis.)

Settings are not specified, the tone is amoral, settings interchangeable.  Key elements to these pieces include postmodernism, masculinity, casual sex, homo-eroticism, and apathy/passivity conveyed during the tender twenties.  Confessional mode/freestyle is the easiest categorization for my style  — I don’t follow any strict regimen for writing these.  My style of writing is very much influenced by musings of my favorite writers: Bret Easton Ellis, Kim Addonizio, Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, and Federico Garcia Lorca.  The lyrics of Fiona Apple inspire me to write altogether — nothing else influences me creatively as she does — she is my favorite artist.
All of my material on here is Copyright ©2012 Samuel Swayne.  My work is vulnerable on this site, I know, but please do not re-blog or reiterate these poems in any way without contacting me first. 

SO, LET’S BEGIN:
the city boy was found dead last night, right after the club closed.
But, we do have good news – there’s significant evidence
that he put up a good, clean fight.
he’s still in his party clothes & faintly reeks of cologne
and whiskey sours.
Yes, we checked; wallet and keys intact.
We’ve assessed that he was likely en route
to a kind of sexual odyssey with boys in black underwear
all of whom were known as good kissers —
just what city boy was always known for.

Leave him to rest in peace, but let me warn you –
he’ll prove you dead wrong &
Resurrect – drunk as hell but still good as new – for just one more night.

We’ve all agreed – on his gravestone we’ll write:
“leave me here so’s I can surrender to my godforsaken
apathy which worthlessness caught me, quickly, and
with my last threads of romance I tried to win over its struggle
in a battle I didn’t battle, but instead, lost — in a good, clean fight –
I want nothing more than to be left for dead under the
blinking red lights and nearby noises in my beloved city night.”