Bringing In The Harvest by Serge Gurkski (short books for teens txt) 📕

his
trailer had gone. We listened to Cream’s I feel free
and were swiftly floating into a Hitchcock scene.

We parked at the city baths, a ten-minute walk to
the shabby drug bazaar. George suddenly turned to
me, bleak-lipped, and whispered that he had
just shat his pants. He told me he’d drive back to
my place and must have gotten lost in his private nightmare.
I met M., the dottoressa, in front of one of the joints.
She jumped up and down, pumped up with speed.

We sat down on a stone bench, where she fed me some pills
I swallowed cider. I looked at her face striped by trembling
streaks of moonlight. She had found a wealthy customer
but didn’t want to make the deal alone. That’s how luck is spelled,
I thought and she drove us to his house in her father’s limo.
A couple of stretched-out eye blinks passed and the three of us rested
amply oxycodoned at a pond overhung with rustling willows.

An eon later I stared at the nicotine-colored
ceiling of my own bed room, while listening with disbelief
to the sad voice on the phone: M. had died in a spectacular
car crash this morning on the autobahn to Frankfurt.
I inspected my pockets full of drugs to share with George,
but he had disappeared leaving an undecipherable note
on the kitchen table and a stench in the bathroom.


After The Party


Bits of contemptuous
conversations flash
into my mind and send
waves of embarrassment
through my hung-over
body.

It is usually then
that the phone rings
and I pull the plug.
Short messages cram
my mobile.
I’m not available.
I sense impending doom.
I crawl around the party’s
battlefield to find
some more of the
stuff that almost
killed me yesterday.


African Out Of The Blue


Just a geological second ago
all of us were deep dark skinned,
including even Mr. D. Duke’s ancestry.
We knew yams and hunting the savannah
afraid of lions – and in the darkness – demons.
We loved the nurturing green so much.
Of body parts protruding let me mention
only asses and eyes and needy lips.
That’s, what we started with, and a song
like a sad howl and a weapon from wood.
When in a moment sunken in deep,
known as meditation, I revive our
archetypes and watch them dance and sing
the joy of being, I catch hazy glimpses
of Mitochondrial Eve waving her
laughing brown eyes at me.
Out of Africa and into the dark
we moved under the brilliant immensity
of solemnly mute and eternally cryptic skies.
We raised our heads for a single singeing kiss of the sun
and just another geological second later we’re gone.



contents

Poetics
Bar Flying High
After You've Gone
Bateau Caraibe
Abuse Me As An Appetizer
Cold
Dance So Good
Faun at the foot of the fountain
Desperate Gardens
Easter
Black Ram
In the drizzle
Left_Hand Weakness
Rains of March
Nature Makes Music
On A Dream Lost
Moon Man
Pro Fairies
Recovery
Rita Again
Stanzas Like Birds
Tipsy Cakewalk
The Beguine
A Hitchcockery
After The Party
African out of the blue

Imprint

Text: Serge Gurkski
Publication Date: 12-31-2012

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