RUMORS
June was like a sad Bergman film
Then it was like Wild Strawberries
Don’t mansplain
The water
To the water
I don’t want to tell you what it became
Indexes are just so
Readily available
And I’m trying
Life is crazy
Can we go back to the water
Flotsam the past there
The earth is old
And the earth has been through a lot
The earth has seen a lot of shit
Freeing me
In a weird way
And I’m not ready
I need to go the Apple Store
And all these random dots
Are diverging
Into a cipher
I pretend
Will lull
The dramas
I’ve actualized
And there’s the reaper
Ghosting away
Because I’m not right within
I have a lot of clarity this morning
Even silence
Is a torch song
There are superficial reasons
Why my influence is growing
Please just give me a moment
I have my own ideas
My acoustic guitar
Belongs in a trash can
Next to
My reflection
In the snow-covered hills
Mirror in the sky
Find me a therapist
Who accepts
Mass Health
And I’m getting older too
NOT FADE AWAY
Here in the
Cruel light
Of Tuesday
Beneath
The aureate shimmer
Of a skylight
From last century
It feels certain
That I would
Leave a mess
In the other world too
The disassembled miracle
Of daylight
When a style decision
Makes it obvious
You are moving
Through space
But it doesn’t mean
Anything at all
Whenever I need perspective
I amortize
Some vain impulse
There’s always tomorrow
Or maybe not
Don’t listen to me
Wicked October
What lies behind
The also-rans
Of an authored life
Written in sorrow
And flash?
The urge
Lifted from the air
When you sense
Reason is dumb
But it’s what
I have
These days
I days I sit
In cubicles
Please
Don’t confront me
With my failures
I have not
Forgotten them
WRAP YOUR TROUBLES IN DREAMS
You’re only as good as your equipment
Mine right now is outdated but stable
Not in the mood actually
I think I will retitle this poem
TO LIVE IS TO FLY
Could work
Because I’m a folk singer now
Hey, it’s a free market
I’m being very patient today
Just another participant
In that larger thing
Sweating out the toxins
Beauty in transition
What can I say?
Out in the field
Touching the abstract
You know
Making nothing
Is a horror business
To think
I almost lost it that night
At the seawall
Staring into Long Island Sound
I snapped rapid pics of the fog
Until my battery died
As if that could fix it
This lifetime staring into space
Uncertain especially
About this towering
Magnetic trainwreck
Where everything’s concatenated
I’m totally fine
Just being dramatic
Poet shit
I’m not a fiction poet
I mean fiction writer
But
Haha
Works either way
∩
Jon Ruseski is the author of the chapbooks Sporting Life, Enter Sandman, and Hair of the Dog. He is a founder and editor of blush.