Selected Poems by John Maurer

Photo Source: Flickr

Serve Me Over Ice

Pour me out of a crystal pitcher

Sob a lemon in with me

Far from ripe; probably too sour

Practice your spit takes with me

Pull the carving knife off the whetstone

Slice my face off with a cold cut

Take your small golden forks

This meat may be tough

Not food for thought,

This is, I am, what Chinese Kings

Called a delicacy

Karma calls me as a long-distance lover

Direct her to voicemail

For my tongue slithers through grass

Eating all golden and delicious

The pits in the pit of my stomach

Arterially tumbling into polished ghost notes

Broken little lexical me

Put me back together?

No, the opposite

Pin my arteries to cork

Drop globs of me into chemicals

Watch me turn colors one should not use for home décor

Take me out of the packaging

Find my instructions

Translate them into any language

That I might understand

Self-Immolation

Cremators can't differentiate

Between stitches and dental floss

No amount of pity

Will make you legend

Toss these in a salad

Use brass tongs

Drizzle in children's tears

Falling off monkey bars

Hitting the ground

Feels like adulthood

Tastes of coffee

And a hint of Canadian whiskey

I left my soul

In a train station locker

Left my heart

In Massachusetts

As flakes dance down

They melt on my tongue

I wave my arms on the street

It looks like you

My Zelda

How we were legendary

Venturing to adventure beyond comfort

How we kept awakening in the past

Each other’s feathers shimmering in time with the Macarena

A species of songbirds going extinct

Too majorly entranced by each other’s masks

We have found reasons for seasons for ages

We live inside each other’s pages

Waking up next to you in the wind

Our linked larynxes couldn't be broken by four swords

You painted a far from minnish cabin on the ceiling of my skull

What have you been but my twilight princess

On a painted mountain with a snowy cap

So cold and alone there without a phantom like me

Turning our hourglass to track our spirits

How they seem to fly away like irritated magnets

How I would get high as the skyward and roll out some sore words

From between worlds we have lived, where we live, where we think

And what is the difference between trying and forcing to a hero

Only looking for a breath of the wild

Mask Like A Face

I wear my mask like a face; rough as coconut husk I aspire to be a sapphire and to never need to be apologized for On the carpet staining scarlet, my heart turns itself over in my chest Like jewels in my hand, my little emerald tablets They spill on the floor and look like teeth of a Hollywood smile In store front reflections, I don’t see myself, just a ghost Not rattling chains but chain-smoking and talking about his bitch wife He asks me why I am an artist I say, what else was I to do with all this pain? My dark seeing eye, my near seeing eye My fear seeing eye, my far-seeing eye The silver sliver and the scorching yellow sit atop my nose They conversate about how they used to be gods How they made the waves and then made them hot I swallow an oxycodone diamond and drop my curtains Who has time for a To-Dos list with such a long To-Don’ts list I tried to sort out my skeleton until I found I was boneless I mended my socks and folded my laundry I tended to my lovers and lied, saying, I will return The marginal amount of hashish you left in my dad’s car But I won’t, I will wear my face like a mask All my friends will say I look like a stranger I will tell fortunes with potpourri merchants I will grow fruit trees in a manger and listen to the soil I will never be myself too long, never let myself get too ripe A head too right is left without spaces to fill The organs of an artist are rusted church organs; at their best

Bio:

John Maurer is a 23-year-old writer that writes fiction, poetry, and everything in-between, but his work always strives to portray that what is true is beautiful. He has been previously published in Claudius Speaks, The Bitchin’ Kitsch, Thought Catalog, and others.

Twitter: @JohnPMaurer