Grumble

It’s always exciting to be able to use a picture I took with a post. The other exciting thing for me about this post is that this is quite a new poem. I actually wrote it Thanksgiving morning. I arrived super early to my parents house and my parents were out, so I was locked out for a bit. I drove my car to this spot and wrote this poem.

Grumble

A seagull beaks a crab. Drops it.

All day long the voice practices

Reaching out of the body. A smile

Drops from his winter cracked lips.

Even the loudest bird loses words

When it drops expectation. Away

He took himself to study the gray

Soft smuged pencil sky. Crowned

With an ache for a recreational escape.

Living with some kerosene in the back

Of the truck. He is fluent in the language

Of heartbreak and Espressos. Keeping him

Concentrating on things like fault lines,

That hold no apologies for the destruction

Everyone knows is eventually going to become a change

In structure, reality. Techtonic shifts,

A language he can construct to,

A man equipped with wrecking balls,

Cold shoulders, and scalding student debt.

He smells the gasoline and gets a

Cornerstone pub buzz that wants to slur,

“Give me a match and let’s burn this

Fucker down to a pile of ash.” Lonely

Looking eyes might have been his past,

But as he watches the seagull swoop in again

For the crab. He hears his grumbling belly,

Feels his stubborn heart.