Max Poems

Why do so many of the songs I love start with “Last Night”?  As if I were mired in the past or trying desperately to HOLD ON to the watercolor details of 12 hours ago. “Last night she said…” “Last night I dreamt…” “Last night, again…”

Then again, the song does change. Like leaves change with autumn’s turn or a wrong turn down the wrong alley where a man looms in the shadows. Some spooky Nosferatu-looking motherfucker.

And again we move. We walk it out. And it just happens that the wind brushes lightly on my face and a tear falls though I’m not sad. Not in the slightest. But in some way the tear feels right so I pay it no mind and it rolls down my face, a harp’s thrumming pop and torque leading its descent, feeling right the whole way down.

Pay the storms and the snow outside no mind. Let it be aflame on your breath. Let it burn. Let it smolder, sterilize. Antiseptic on your tongue.

Reach out to pour caramel and chocolate on charred oak. or douse a burning tire with vanilla. Pour it together and spread the feeling.

Or alone

if you’d rather, in your armchair by the window or the hearth where the heat of the peat fire warms your roots and reminds you of home.

Look to see how you will help one another. Be a reason for conflict. Redeem yourself if you must. Observe the ways you withstand work. Decide on the next frame of art to channel and repeat. Compose a verse in your head and I’ll read it back to you.            Please remember,                        I will.

And they laid in the grass where Americans danced swaying with wine and song at a celebrated lack of woes that can’t exist alone.

And they danced in the grass where Americans died sinking toes in mud and leaves with pounding pulses ringing ears carved with warm breeze with time into stillest ease.