Robert Balun: #NotTrump Series
Paul Green
No-Titled
past the salt marsh low in the tide
beside
the coal fired power plant
the rigging
where the water was our house
on the edge of a reef coral bleaching
the kingdom that’s been crashing on
our scratching lives
in
the kingdom
the kingdom asks for distance how far inside am I
inside the architecture the supply line
the world off away
somewhere
here
the talk-talk
I forget
what I
said
heard
read
how far away am I
where is the partition
how do I undo the language
filled
in my head
memory’s
prismatic
heavy
yesterday
and how
it plays back
a moment hewn
from a moment
to be lived in--
now light falling
through today’s
same sky
the uncollected
refraction I claim to be
unspooling
unfurled
a construct of time
a notion of
exactly then
a need to catalog and count
today’s worries
always running
out of money
as the sky
begins to red
the sunset of hurricanes
I can’t tell you how I plan to survive
but if I find it
I promise I will
I know there is so much I want to know
to remember
to be able to say
why there is so much
put before us
put ahead of a home
where we are buried
and told
like a story
the evidence
when so much
doesn’t hold up
here inside
another morning
where I try
to spit the blood
clot
from
the
throat
where I start from a place of instability
a history to reckon
sip trace
amounts
of chlorine
this practice of requirement
of always on the move
to keep up with
the design
where everything I buy
a vice
energy
taken
to
be
mine
necessity
(made
to be)
inequity
taken from
another
I get
so anxious
for news
what images do I elevate
the camera knows
how fragile I can be
a city state
completely awash in the world
the years threshing on
I don’t miss how young I was
I don’t mind
my ripped up sleeves
my hat full of time
each moment
of gravity
the collapsing embers
too bright to look at
I am that much closer
to seeing
I make myself sick
I keep myself sick
and call it survival
strategy
the colony in my cough
the scattered dialogues
like crashed
paper planes
thrown around
my home
these few rooms
to walk through
I call myself compartmentalized
call it compromised
what kind of baggage am I
who was I in that dream
all of that buzz to sift through
I am trying to stay warm
I hold my hands in a shape
call it a rune
now call it resistance
Robert Balun received his MFA from The City College of New York, where he was a recipient of the Jerome Lowell DeJur Prize for Poetry and the Teacher-Writer Award. His debut chapbook, Self (Ceremony), is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. His poems have appeared in Bodega, Similar Peaks, Smoking Glue Gun, Heavy Feather Review, Word Riot, and others. Robert is one of the founders of the Bushwick Sweethearts reading series. He teaches creative writing and composition at The City College of New York.
