OUROBOROS
by Nathan Tluchowski
Goodbye Words for the Dead Fella
while I was holler whisp’rin
my wake up midnight moans
you was wrapped up warm
and tidy in your so sheer linen
with your worms
moan groaning your way along
cold cement ground
to traintrack busseat home
died up north Vi’ ginya
carried you there by quick spectral dog
thin and fared by string of ya shoes
rythym in bone and dancin
dance dance dance
like the down south devils lit up
get out fires in your stupid feet
dance around coals but still
when end of the line fell short
you’ve gotta walk
travel heavy down through prickly winter weeds
go on with moonlight growls and gravel slippers
go sack it home cross dead rails
friend to all the broken wine bottles long the way
great merica neath some sad dumb howl
like starving lost coyote
hungry and lonesome for warm bed home
whistlin church songs to the sky
drinkin in the cold north night
with faint scent of youth and grease
homes up on ahead awaitin
you promise tired shoe
with hot chicken, hams, and sweetlove gravy
same old bed with the you shaped hole worn in
high noon sneak snuck whiskey tucked n waitin
right in the closet behind the baseball cards
and mother’s there and all the word is
tidy
laundry starched like little kisses on your cheek
and every beast is broiled harmless
frozen breath and worn out shoe
dawn dreams instead of road
yellin out wake up crescendo
dozing death in shrouded sleep
snoring laughter then forgetting
with a mournful rattle yawn
where again we can stagger drunk
you and me
through old virile streets of song
reveling in piss whiskey
stumbling home to some new door
to sleep like the dust
on unstirred lips
withering in winter wind while we wait
for every molecule
that was once us
to be cleaned up nice and
tidy
swept away by some motherly breeze
eternity is just a day away
so sleep easy til then
my forevor imbecilic friend
and take care to keep
from freezin’
Ouroboros
Oh Intangible Tabernacle of imagined cunt!
Oh Great Exodus!
Women walk by my window
strange nurses, warm and wondrous
something to observe, something to carry.
Daydreams wayward outside my window
gaggle goes on way to lunch
While I sit stranded on islands of tile
A Tangent reality, a symptom, something to sift through..
Legs.
Playing the daydream tapes all the way through
From sweet tentative kisses
and awkwardly entwined bodies
to pain, to the dismissal of problems,
glass shattering arguments, exiles,
weekends away from locked out home.
A thousand moments flood my mind
All with different legs and faces.
With bloodstains in her jeans, rusting leg razors
Littering the shower, our dirty clothes stacking
As the count of days since we last made love
Continues and compounds.
Nightmare efforts to:
command, control, cuckold
To hurt her just a little more than she hurt you
Wanton siren sighs from these pass imposing thighs
Played out in earnest
to love shower mornings
to passive aggressive pacifism
Putting fists into drywall .
Breathing together, bending together,
Breaking together, with elegance.
Blossoms played out to bloodlettings.
Gone with all the ones who came and went
In befores,
Heads that laid ‘pon my chest before
Sighed hauntingly with such trust like saccharine
Played out to stolen hearts dripping strychnine
Wondering now the wandering roses
Hopes laid like Eucharist in them
To only find ourselves sinking
Invested, stuck, separated.
The wondrous women
Waltzed by my window
and I do not wish them to return.
About the Author:
Nathan Tluchowski is a 28 year old emerging writer from a small, dying steel town in Ohio. In the past year his work has been published in Vagabonds from Weasel press, the winter poetry collection from JerryJazzMusician, Volume 4 of Sonder Midwest and by The Whitewall Review.