writers – Page 6 – Kevin Trent Boswell

Snake

Thin, diamond-eyed weaver
Of rhythmic, pulsating speech
Spells spill from forked, cunning tongue

Whispering secrets that never fade
Of things that are only just out of reach,
Union, knowledge unknown to the young

Ruddy red splatter on the worn blade
Spirit piercing flesh and taking root
Dew sits lightly on the petals of a flower

Serpentine speaker, knower, deceiver,
Thief in waiting to purloin the loot
Beneath the cover of the witching hour

Author’s Note: Yesterday, I learned that someone passed away in my apartment building (presumably within a day or so of when I heard about it). I had never met them and they hadn’t been living here long at all. Their death was apparently not unexpected; I was told that they were in poor health before they ever arrived here.

The weird thing is, they lived in the apartment right below mine. But stranger still, I had occupied that apartment myself, up until just a few months ago. When my current unit became available, I took the opportunity to move because it’s quieter on the top floor. While I don’t think I ever met the tenant, it was a brisk reminder that death is never far away.

Death is right under your feet
But try to put it out of your mind
There are chores to do and
Demands to meet
So, try putting it out of your mind

Death is coming up behind you
It is wise to not make a stink of it
Since you cannot stop it, and
There’s nothing you can do,
It’s best to try and not think of it

There beside you, Death hovers
I suggest you pretend not to notice
It will pounce on nervousness,
Any weakness it discovers,
So, just casually appear not to notice

It may approach you from any angle
You are bold, but Death is much bolder
You can tell it’s there by the cold, stale air
That envelopes your throat to strangle
Death patiently perches on your shoulder

not exactly dire

it’s pressing, I will admit, yes
and it was needed yesterday
however, it can wait,
if you’re short on time

a kiss and formal gesture to bless,
to take all the pain away,
to set everything straight,
and smooth out the rhyme

no one is used to getting
all that they want,
and most certainly not
in this economy

tea leaves, crystals, and bloodletting
a beg and a ruthless taunt
the emperor’s still got
his priests and astronomy

but you and I, the commoner type,
left only with crumbs and the crumble
of entropy and its effect on us
if we wait for it to sort itself out

or loudly, we may boldly gripe
with a roar, or at least a rumble
and let them feel our fuss
and threaten to do more than pout

and then, that which we release,
it falls from memory, and at last,
we clear the debris, and the way
and walk into the here and now

with a little squeeze and some grease,
we can break free and hold fast
and hear everything we have to say,
about the where, the when, and how

A Ridiculous Thing

Don’t worry, you will love no part of it;
It’s certain to please, someone, somewhere

Possibly and definitely, maybe
No one who isn’t everyone, but is

Enter the theater of the absurd

And words… did I mention…
There is words; there are many word

A poem, a bit of a slight,
A sleight of hand, poetic
Stream-of-consciousness to commence
Leaning into the background
A handy little bit of conscience, handed
Down onto the foreground and landed
And not the slightest bit of it
Made any sense,
Not one single mode or section

Reason completely escaping detection
And hence,
Thoroughly not the throughout…
It’s good
And it’s okay if you realize that it isn’t
Okay to be good at detecting
That it is, but only when you know
That it might be

Peek behind the floor
There’s nothing under the door
And someone is beside the rug,
Shrugging at the sound of the wall
And laughing at all the empty windows

We might have just enough time
To do everything
With the rest of the nothing

No one needs an excuse to be a poem

A poem is an utterly meaningless,
Ridiculous thing,
And everyone has
Every bit as much right
To be one
As I do

locus

weighted dice spilling from broken jaws

tainted allegories and
flawless renderings of the invisible

dry beans pour out of sacks
onto tables of diamond and ivory

an abacus of emeralds,
strung on strands of horsehair

a tiny pewter coin sits
atop a scale of solid silver
resting on a column of solid gold

pristine smudges of chocolate
on acrylic peanut butter tapestries

buckets full of comets kicked over
and showers of sparks
falling on the floor

it’s enough to fill
the silos of the universe
top to bottom

but is it enough?

each individual grain of sand
grates against another;
all are dutifully counted

the hourglass is emptied
of all its inexorable empires

excuses are forged from breath,
and hammered into the sacred elixir
of nothingness

there is no motion
in this river’s torrent

the asphalt streets stole it all,
sold it to capricious eels
who swim in desperate candlelight

germinating helixes
bristling thorn vines

funneling promising poisons
into the infant mouths
of ageless behemoths
who rule small places

culmination is the beginning
of the termination of endings
and the siphoning off
of all the intermittent middle bits,
the ones that,
as an afterthought,
we tacked onto the ends
in carefully coordinated haste

the endeavor,
doomed from the outset

thank goodness
we never embarked upon the journey
and that we saw it through
all the way to the end

we can scarcely contain ourselves
from raving about
what raucous ecstatic bliss
it was, from the pistol start
to the razored end

steal the serpent’s fangs

replace its venom
with politesse
and useless smalltalk

watch giddily
as it pathetically
gnaws and gums
unproductively at its prey

we dare not speak
of our elusive mysteries,
not to the droll, sour, uninitiated brood,
lest they discover our secret formula
of beginning in the middle
and ending at the front part
of the second third half
of each hind quarter,
but only on Thursdays,
except on leap years of an august May

the excitement would surely
be too much for their frail constitutions,
and over dead, they would drop down,
into new incarnations
of ceaseless wonder

and when, if so,
would any of it
ever cease?

take care,
that none of this ever occurs,
except for those precious few times
that it unavoidably does not

dial back
the wilting clock
and try not to
try again

The music and poetry of Kevin Trent Boswell.jpg

stain

In loving memory of Jevon Ward

he was speaking vodka,
a language that I understood
all-too-well

as I sat on the edge of his bed,
I handed him the joint
that I had just finished
carefully rolling

he lit it, and taking a small toke,
became suddenly
and uncharacteristically
serious

“You do know that I’m not life, right?”

it must have been obvious
that I had no clue
how to answer that,
so he continued,

“When I was just a little boy,
“your grandpa (and mine) told me,
“he said,

‘Son, you’ll pull time before you hit twenty.’

“At nineteen, I did six months.”

before he could say another word,
drunk people spilled into the room
and the party took over

it was as if the writer
of this dark comedy of errors
had carefully placed
the interruption into the script
for dramatic effect

years later,
I stood in the yard
with my father
one morning

we burned a mattress
in the yard

a mattress with
a peculiar red stain
on the top end of it,
right about where a man
would lay his head down
to sleep

smoke climbed high,
snaking its way through
the bare tree branches,
coating the limbs,
blackening the sun,
giving twisted new meaning
to the wind

with each searing crackle,
each hot little iron
that launched out of the flames,
the notion was solidified
that you would never be
with us again

the red stain
is forever removed,
taken off and away
from the bad blend of cotton
and synthetic fiber

its ugly lack of aesthetic,
permanently removed
from the eye

we have, instead,
embroidered you
into our hearts,
in gold-letter
on satin

a little redirection,
a simple trick
of the firelight
and the mind

a touch of
pre-approved manipulation,
vocabulary and memory,
now twisted
to suit ourselves
with semblances
of sanity

and you, all dressed up,
looking dapper
in a new suit

something to
bring you over
the threshold
in style

we have gathered
many flowers

you were one of them

now, on this rainy Saturday,
we gather more,
but none of them are as rare
or as interesting as you

still, we do so wish
that you were not so

still

now, we are all
so much more careful
with our words

we never had to
monitor our tongues before

we always counted on you
to say something
deliciously profane,
hysterical, sublime

you said things far more terrible
than we could ever manage
(or dare) to bring forth
from our fearful mouths

you said it all for us,
you, being our favorite devil,
you spared no words,
knowing full well that your time
was short

now, everything is
serious and sullen

ash settles on us,
stealing the still-warm
seat of smiles

we do our best
to preserve the integrity
of your memory

with all our words,
so clumsily polite and wrong

yours were so horribly accurate

your list of faults could fill volumes

all of these,
now consumed by fire
and forgetfulness

we will not miss them

we are, in fact, glad
to be free of these;
free from the weight
of your awful acuity

your spiteful condemnation
of this earth was always felt
hot upon our necks

even your parting words of
“Fuck this world!”
were a vicious pronouncement
of a pox on all our houses

that seething sentiment,
ever-present,
laced into the mix
of the cocktail that was you;
virtually indistinguishable
from the indiscriminate joy
of your cosmic jester voice
pouring out over our
wanting brains

we will not miss the
chaos of your actions,
or your allegiance to
an autocratic indifference

we only miss

everything else

but beneath all of the
intolerable heavy,

knowing of nothing else to do…

we dutifully
lift our eyes
to the coming days
where you
are not

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