Okay. Alright.

A Collection of Poems

by: Justen Cheney

I. Witch House

I had to call you back –

the numbers were still new

and I wasn’t sure which

house was yours.

I was sitting right out

front in my mother’s car

but I didn’t know the witch

house was yours.

Lying on a hammock

in your back-yard

where the sun still knew

how to shine,

I was mislead by voo

doo, while your father

peeked through the blinds

like the lady counting twenty

eight days passed, and

I had to call you back –

it was April fool’s. My

sense of humor

commandeered, and

saw us apart twenty-eight

more, but I didn’t know the witch

house was yours.

So I followed you down

to the basement while

your father slept alone,

and in the blackened white

dark we gave names

to the love that we birthed,

breathing fire like a

dragon that was yours.

And mine.

II. Journey into the Woods (Methuselah)

The rhythm of that tree

was quick to not be caught,

ripping down the creek,

and whispered in the dark.

He stood on all the shadows,

made King to those below him,

and grew in all the others

that did not grow to know him.

He sat among the gods,

shooting up towards the heavens,

perched eternally in that place,

with a glowing smile on his old, wise face.

And while his reaching arms

kindled a loving fire within,

those very flames, fed with poison,

were the beginnings to our end.

III. Felix Culpa

What muddied lens covers my day-to-day, resulting in a transparent that is bleak and ugly? In my exhausted haze, with little concern for conscious, I chased poisons around my parents’ sterile suburban town, constantly reassuring myself that Thoreau was right –

That this time tomorrow I’ll be in Austin, sitting by a fire singing, “I ain’t got no name.” And I will.

Rimbaud fed the darkness that feeds everything else, and together we fought the seas on that dizzy boat. I had enough money, so I threw myself a birthday party, but I just wound up pissed off because everyone was fucking in the attic; I had no one to fuck myself. And it was my birthday.

I got a lobotomy and sniffled in the shower.

Two days later, in north Mississippi, a drunken catfish assaulted me. I walked down the main strip, past the video store and fast food restaurants, never knowing that life could be so coincidentally ironic; the fortune cookie I got from the Chinese restaurant that my white, racist grandmother works in read: “a pleasant surprise is in store for you.” I chuckled.

That weekend I found myself in the rural fields of lost America, walking lackadaisical down the fence painted silly with colors and shapes. It rained the first day but it was all right, because you ended up in the tent with me and ole’ Japhy.

The next morning the sun came up and you called me your “planaroo,” and I laughed. It may have been the music, everywhere. Or the way the light hit your freckled eyes that day – or maybe it was just the MDMA,

but I combed my hair and stood up straight.

IV.

When the words betray the truth, it’s like

opening your eyes for life at the very end – or

diving head-first into a swimming pool with no water.

I lay at the bottom with shards of my back –

bone protruding through my mangled neck,

when the words betray the truth. It’s like

having every drop of your thick, warm blood

flow slowly to the drain at the center, after

diving head-first into a swimming pool with no water.

Paralyzed, I try to call for help, but even if I could,

no one would come. Not “if” they had warned me, but

“when” the words betray the truth. It’s like

believing in the rejuvenation one receives floating

weightless underneath, only to realize that you’re

diving head-first into a swimming pool with no water.

When you sit outside with me, crying on my shoulder,

you make a personal confession and invite me over. But

when the words betray the truth, it’s like

diving head-first into a swimming pool with no water.

V. Freedom

On the far side, desperation

is the breeding ground

for inseparable identities.

With your minds' mirror lost,

being is a sociopath,

or a violent psychopath,

with all the little possibilities

to sacrifice as martyrs.

My freedom is their Jesus;

creative fidelity, his holy word.

I can kick the tireless oppression

of boredom’s despotism with a

bottle of beer, and the inverted

triangle superimposed over

my face, always.

Remember what it feels like

yourself; remember the feeling

gives way to the despair, and

emerges as liberty. But if I die,

let compassion bury me.

VI.

Nickels and dimes, and spare –

changin’ the poor. I have,

and I’m rich, but I wasn’t before.

My body, my bread

you ate off the floor,

now you rest in a hole

somewhere in Hooverville,

and even now, even still,

you cling to your pride and

damn compassion as “charity.”

But if you had the sight to see,

you would lose your fear of me,

and you could know your pride

for what it is; it’s the dark that

hides the day, or the strong

feasting on it’s prey. It’s the KKK.

**disclaimer: this is part of a more ambitious ten poem collection (I ran out of time, but everyone knows how that goes). Hopefully they will be finished soon.