- John Maurer
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