J Pages

Poetry

My Teddy Bear

 

My Teddy Bear is always there whenever I get home.

He never runs off not saying goodbye, and leaving me alone.

 

Instead of a shrug he gives me a hug whenever I need one.

He sits with me when I start to cry, and doesnt leave til I'm done.

 

My Teddy Bear knows exactly what he needs to say,

To turn the rainy clouds into a sun shiny day.

 

He loves me for who I am, and not for what he wants me to be.

He doesn't ask for anything, because he's the only one who can see.

 

I just need someone to love me, and give me the time of day

Not someone who tries to impress me, or just says 'It's gonna be OK'

 

My Teddy Bear is the only one I can trust with my heart

Because I know he will be there always, not just at the start

 

Not just when its time to meet his parents, or party on Friday night

Or to ask for someones number, or to have one of my Sprites

 

I love My Teddy Bear and he has always helped me through

But one thing that he cannot do is say 'Jay, I love you'

 

So if My Teddy Bear cant love me back as I love him,

I dont know if theres anyone who can, and thats why my world is grim

 

-jReese

Falling Down


Reminding myself that
each night I
spend holding you
is one night closer to the day I'll have to let you
go. Something so young should
not be fated to such a premature
end, but still I find that I
deny us the time we have now, avoiding an inescapable ache.

Telling you that you
only need to worry about yourself, because I'm the "strong" one.

Lying to you. Lying to myself. Refusing to
open my heart, for fear that I could
never force it shut again. I pray
god will give me the courage now to tame my emotions
in preparation for the day that I'll have to watch you walk away;
now I know what I have to do... this is the way it has
got to be.
 
-Ben O

09-23-03

 

20 and already so jaded? Now I always wanna be faded.

Turned into what Ive always hated, and everything has been wasted.

 

What the fuck I used to care so much

Bad luck? No Im just stuck

 

This world, this place, grabbing me by the face,

Ive forgotten the cardinal rule in my haste. its just a chase

 

Im the loser, last place, the unfortunate, the short straw, the last to draw, the one that's not like the others.

 

The blonde. The nigger. The prima donna. The asshole. The psycho. The ho. 'yah that one over there, oh my god'

 

But here I stay, or so I may,

Ive got no say anyway. Until that one day....

 

-jReese

<cremation>


beauty may squat, hidden,
in the bodies of men, the fat
spun around boys ribs,
inside my own wrong bones;

this has not unmade
the mirrors
that crack me into halves,

the second dealing justice perfectly
to the first, which, beaten,
lies weeping by the curb.

i have always held the club;
i have always pardoned the crime.

with shut eyes
i might half-stitch up
these irrevocable skins
and pass, naked, through the ovens;

as my own blind cremator,
i could sift though my urn,
nearly forgetting
the name of the ashes.
 
-Danny Marcus

epinephrine pen

 

 

in the suburbs

she dreams about wasp eggs,

white and round

like bitter pills.

 

she goes to wash

but dark abdomens

pump in the sink. 

she screams,

 

they disappear.

she moves to a fort

on long island. they follow

and bang cans in manhattan.

 

in the awful moment

when the sun levels

with the moon,

she wakes up.

 

on the flaking sill, a wasp

pushes a coarse egg

into a hole.  she

flicks it away.

 

-danny marcus

Suction

 

The beige St. Louis depot
with brown-speckled tile
smells of middle-America,
of the life youve noticed
on the television and
occasionally at archaic
bowling alleys

 

A light hum-hum
vibrates from the decade-old
soda machine enveloped
by brown white plastic
signs and you notice
the wailing rips of the
fake leather brown black chairs

 

Out the window, a single
sandy skyscraper screams
above a rusted horizon
of tin cans and dilapidated
cardboard factories which
reminisce of greater days;
and you wonder where it has all gone.

And as you prepare your bags
an explosion of anticipation
inside your feeble chest reemerges
like an old friend from
the North, a rush
of colorless emotion
flooding toward Chicago.

 

-r. boyer

Depression 11-16-02

 

The world is an illusion that dances around my head
One minute exciting and the next merely dead.
Who are we to pretend the miniscule tragedies of our infinitesimally small lives are important in the empty abyss of this lonely universe?
Why am I the only one who sees? The fees of living, not living. Observing the insane from the outside, then one day, its on your side, and you understand how easy it is to slice the flesh of an unknown being.

I wish I could exist without existing, see without being seen. Be clean. Dance without being tranced by that fancy shmanced Bullshit they prance. So many to love. So many I dont love, but love anyway, because the naïveté of my soul cannot stand cold like the last minute of my timeline. Echoes of laughter make me think Im a stink, did I blink and miss the shit thats ink on the page?

Do I have a name? Been so many things from letters to insults, nicknames and any shames that could bring a game to someones lame boring Saturday night flame.

Down the hall comes, alien waves, slaves to the waves, my mind bathes in the shade of the cave they create.

When will it end, at the bend so I can send this flaming fueling mortal stringent back to the charcoal space from which it is bent.

 

-jReese

to the cigarette

 

 

tell me

about mummies

and furnace coal

or pottery men

standing in graves.

i need to know

what monet saw

in the station steam,

what whistles he heard

forced through a bitter lung.

 

please release

the machines secret,

how he comes pumping

with boots free of

soot.  spell new dreams

from your packaged mind

your manyarmed tongues

bound like shiva, spinning.

 

ive seen your flyers

hanging from jaws,

ads for your newest film,

maybe.  youll wear

a chaplin suit this time,

smirking with that

tiny, unforgettable moustache.

ill stand behind

nick drakes shoulder,

trying to catch

your silent,

horoscopic flaw.  

 

ive been here

for years and you

keep getting closer,

signaling in handtalk.

you steam in from

fifteen miles away,

bawling past the beat poets

into my grandpa

out through a goddamn exhaust pipe

 

who am i?

im the hiding boy

in the shower where you

strip off your paper dress.

i heard the colloquium and

cant stand your priests.

your jealous breath

stinks like worn pennies,

like the manticores

who haunt streets  

swinging newspapers

like incense burners.

 

you rise from a pond

with one eye and dance

back and forth

and moan.
 
-danny marcus

04-30-02
 
Nothing can stop me once I get goin.
A tingling inside and all the while knowin.
I'll never again feel the wind on my face blowin.
Leaning into that curve, tip toein.
Eight years behind me, and none in my future.
Fear of being a loser.
My last pursuit of an impossible dream.
How could a desire so immposible before seem even more unattainable now?
What has this meant for my life?
 
-jReese

Your Running Away
 
Your running away   running away from what u've known
 Your running away   running away from who u might of known
 
The future leads us back to the past
We're blown away and can't come back
The feelings gone its blasted away
My heart is broken and she's gone away
 
Your running away   running away from what u've known
 Your running away   running away from who u might of known
 
What was left has flown
The sun don't shine no more
And the sky is falling all because
My heart is broken and she's gone away
 
Your running away   running away from what u've known
 Your running away   running away from who u might of known
 
What should of been 
I couldn't see my eyes were blinded
By the sight of thy
And i'll i've got left is
A broken heart and she's gone away
 

Your running away   running away from what u've known
 Your running away   running away from who u might of known
 
-Runner Dude

Touch of a Dream

With this begun and shadows gone
along the path of sleep and dreams,
we sit and watch the world pass by
like gods not seen but there between.
He attempts to make it all fit right
and reach out across the void,
to pull one close and feel the warmth
of another to be held.
No hand can break this bond of love
forever it shall last,
as this was always meant to be,
defy the ever laughing tongue.
But time shall turn that head to see
the truth of what is there,
and beyond the sunset of their eyes,
the flowers sing a mournful tune.

-PDB

04-11-02
 
Inside a glossy glass bubble I sit.
Although I am eternally trapped, I can see through it.
Inside, trapped, I roll down a droll mountain uncontrolled.
Disoriented, the world is a streak of blurry hurried passing photos.
A site to which I am so accustomed, I know not I am moving.
Approaching, a cliff, towards it, my bubble begins to drift.
Over it, I fly through the sky.
 
-jReese

02-27-02
 
A jolly chuckle
A helping hand
Are these the things that make me who I am?
 
Who do they see?
What do they see?
 
-jReese

J Reese

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