gavin heck | four poems

Mirror Ball

On this glittering subcontinent of now
My foot breaks earth and becomes a part
Of it, it an undeniable moment in this
Particular, peculiar moment of this
Unspectacular, unremarkable pause between


This birth and that death
I take and release another breath
And in the winter’s air it
Is so so there
A dragon releasing signs


A passive participation
An actor reading lines
We in this moment of reading
This moment of seeing
Of operating our eyes


Can’t just pass this by
Participate in being like it
Or don’t give or take or won’t
Our feet touch the hard ground
Even when no one else is around


External validation fails
Crawls like snails of selfism
And self doubt cheap tin pianos
Of discord when suns prepare to rise
Always somehow a surprise


A child’s forgetting of day’s past
And days to come not yet learned
The ho hum of taking for granted
Another foot is planted another
Grows wings, dances steps, makes noises


And other things
We, collective we, absolute not
I arrive at this mass of us
And the wheels on the bus
Go round and round moving


This energy into new domesticity
Old patterns of animals moving across
Frozen rivers that later run
Under time’s gun, over the under
Really makes me wonder


Whether this mumbling about the
Driver driving the weather
Isn’t really about saying
I am here, was here stopped
For a brief moment and shed a tear


Which only’s eye saw gone
Salt and everlasting maw
Had it’s time then no, no
More, released the suffering
Self from the mirror and the


Mirror ball, went akimbo
Mumbo’d all the jumbos it
Could wrap it’s arms around
Then made a sound something like
I was here, and I was you


True and yet was not enough
To contain the luck of the
Math problem of the self
Here then not, not ever then
Gone or moving along

The Half Life of Lead (A note to all future generations of lovers)

Speak to all girls, boys…
to all whatevers
from all Ipanemas or Columbias
or Albuquerques or Rochesters
and all wherevers.


It is true that
Regret is a
Pound of lead
While rejection a
Pound of feathers


Yet also true the wind
Will come tomorrow to
Blow the feathers away,
While lead takes eons
To truly decay

There is a thought bubble

There is a thought bubble
with a flower
there is a floating memory
of ghosts


there is a man crying
tears what
else would he do
with those eyes


There are performers
acting out lives
They haven’t lived
With a depth and resonance


A depth and resonance
That penetrates the man
That wounds and heals
and wounds and reminds


That war is eternal
Internal that dancing
Is spun from spiders
Tales, that it bites


The bites, the dulling
Of teeth on flesh
On bone, on fruit and
Vegetables are labels


That fall off like clothes
On lovers, like teeth from
Corpses, like love from
Moderns, on their way to something


Better, better best
Betting that around the next
Corner, there is no coroner
Waiting for their rest.


There is a flower with
You and I a few years ago
In it and I’d rather be
There, than here.

The Casimir Force

I hover above you
scientists reveal secrets
become a part of lamb-you
cartoon levitating lovers
and you dissolve into wolf-me


Stars, meteors rain down
ultimate cause of friction?
reduced to perseid’s nill
lighter than spare air
smaller than just dust


Despite the force is small
and short, the paranormal
is deaf to Geneva
we hover above Cygnus
scientists, revealing a force


You can’t really write about
much less measure Aquarius
in a sterile lab
no really
shush

Gavin Heck

has had work published in: Smile Hon You’re In Baltimore, A Half Dozen of the Other, The Rutger’s Review, The Home Planet News. He has been a featured reader at The Continental and The Squire Pub in NYC, The Court Tavern in New Brunswick, NJ….Minas, Gallery 788, Cyclops, Atomic Books and a variety of venues in Maryland. He lives in Baltimore but dreams of New Mexico. Best way to reach him is http://www.facebook.com/heck.heck.heck

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