PUDDLES AND GUTTERS
I reside in the puddle beyond your back door
Where the daylight stinks
And mosquitos spawn.
I am in your roof gutters
Strangled between the rotting leaves
And the bird dung.
I am trapped in the spider web
Spun on your windowsill, strangling
While the spider is away.
I am in your keyhole;
The squeak in your bedroom door;
The dust upon your books.
I live in the knot in your hair
You comb out again and again
After you bathe.
I am stuck in the grease
In the clog of your kitchen drain,
The cockroaches clambering over me for freedom.
I am in the drool stain on your pillowcase.
I am just where your lips
Meet the flesh of your sleep.
I am everywhere you are.
I stalk you from the dirt and the mud
And the static on your radio.
I reside in the puddle beyond your back door
Where the daylight stinks
And mosquitos spawn,
Rising out to dine
On the blood of the living,
Bringing pestilence and nothing more.
I am the small insignificant thing
That holds on to the mosquito’s leg,
Swatted down with it or escaping, depending.
SEVENTEEN
Three A.M. and thinking about
How pretty some of those girls were
Standing on the subway platform,
Bending to adjust their socks
Or reading a book, back up against a column,
Wearing their best denim,
The trains going by and blowing their hair into their unclouded faces,
Oblivious to my glances
Or my hunger.
Thinking about the friends I had
(I thought I had)
Who flung their daggers
All along my back
As I felt not a thing at the time.
I am forty five now
But I will hear a song
Or smell a smell out of place
Yet familiar,
Or hear a coin falling to the ground and spinning
And I am reminded I will always be fourteen
Or sixteen or seventeen,
My heart a slimy frightened thing,
Beating in the shadows of the rest.
I am thinking about the woman I wanted to love
And how I was a fool and she a charlatan,
Whipping me with her duality
And her nonchalance.
I am thinking about my friend who, it turns out
Was anything but best.
I remember names and faces
And I remember moments.
Moments when I thought I had found my tribe
And how little by little
Those affirming moments eroded with each truth
That they were not like me at all
And I was glad I was not like them
Although I wished so to belong.
Gradually I just came around less and less
And no one called me, asking me where I was.
It was right I should not be there.
One of them one day
As we were traveling by train told me,
“I don’t like you.
I don’t think we should take the train together anymore.”
Out of the blue, there it was.
The rest of them just said things about me
When I was not present.
He is the only one I respect.
He is still a fucker.
Just thinking about meeting one of them
Purely by chance on the street
Brings back my stutter
And a desire to duck into the next store,
Waiting for them to pass.
Coming close to half a century old,
I am still a little boy
Alone in his room
Crying over nothing
In the near dark
While outside
The rains falls
And falls,
Creasing the windows
From the outside.
UNEARTHED SILVER
I have not and will not forget
The blood that formed in my mouth
Like unearthed silver
The birds that swooped and glided
Before the trees that stopped their swaying
In a wind that carried you to me
For what turned out to be mere moments.
My heart, my lungs swelled with a love
That lasted longer than we
But are now shriveled and crumpled foils
That rot on the surface of what was falsely believed
To be
A strong and fertile soil.
I have not and will not forget
The blood that formed in my mouth
Like unearthed silver
And the perceived love in eyes
That seemed to be the turning of the world,
The running clockwork keys of the sun
But I try
I try
I try.
John Tustin’s poetry has appeared in many disparate literary journals since 2009. fritzware.com/johntustinpoetry contains links to his published poetry online.