Tuesday poem #403 : Jake Byrne : THE HEART OF THE TOURIST IS EMPTY

 

I

To travel the world inside your own dumbass skull
And not disturb a single neuron in it
As last looks go you could do worse
Than a tower of flame

II

The sky is mouldy peach.
I am drawn to this evil pier...
Lignified steps
Wet with stinking dulse
You have your instructions.
Meet me at the gate where air meets water
Self-destruct after reading
Break only hearts take only photographs

III

Men are beasts! always
Pissing on the seat always
Shouting always slackjawed always
Stuffing their cocks
In your mouth

IV

I see the girls walk by dressed in their summer colds. 

V

Lightning strikes the greenhouse
Again and again I experience
Sensation x
And x engenders pain in the world
Therefore I engender pain:
A bolt from the blues

VI

Magic is happening here
My good bitch
He follows me up to the ersatz waterfall
Ass testing the seams of his twill pants
I want so badly for our bodies to communicate
A spirit tricks me into the eastern grotto

VIII

In the kitchen hot milk
Hits boiled ginger juice
Curdles into skin
A barrier that air cannot traverse

IX

One perfect white specimen left on a bush
Of rotting roses
A beetle hidden in it
The heart of the tourist is empty

X

Crackle of fish skin
It is time to throw another thing on the fire
A man vomits into a dumpster
Wipes his mouth
Cheers
The dumpster cheers too!

XI

The rose garden is a misnomer.

XII

Still pool
Surrounding a rose garden of your own
Carefully manicured
Hybridized
Reflection
Repose
Branding
Solitude
Delusion
Ad nauseam

XIII

Hot ginger milk
Curdling on my face

 

 

Jake Byrne is a queer writer. His poem “Parallel Volumes” won CV2’s Young Buck Poetry Prize for 2019. His work has appeared in Bat City Review, PRISM international, Lambda Literary’s Poetry Spotlight, The Puritan, and The Fiddlehead, among others. His first chapbook, The Tide, was published by Rahila’s Ghost Press in 2017. He is a settler based in Tkaronto, on the traditional meeting places of the nations of the Huron-Wendat, the Seneca, the Haudenosaunee, and the Missisaugas of the Credit River.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan