Multitudes Contained

A Day to Myself

Thu, 23 May 2013 21:53:45 -0400

The solitude is intoxicating

at times.

Defiant, the ghosts
introduce themselves
in the past
tense.
Those remembered
beg to be forgotten
while those who
you forgot
beg for anything
you can spare.

The stillness
wraps his
cold arms
around my
neck.
His unshaven
face scratches
softly
to hell
my better
intentions.

Yet

the gravity here
in this room
is too
severe.
Couldn’t stand
if I wanted to,

not for
anything.

The pen weighs
more than
the words are
worth.

And the sound of
my voice falls

flat

into the carpet
with a
soft
cruel

thud.

-Jeff Finn (2013)

Talks Too Much

Thu, 23 May 2013 20:43:00 -0400

The heart-
wrenching anxiety
of words,
viscous words,
defiling sweet
virginal
silences.
Coming
out in violent
ephemeral
bursts of mangled
enthusiasm.

Every syllable
throws my entire
weight
against a world
unprepared.
Watch it
buckle
and collapse
like cardboard.

Their remnants
shatter, splinter,
stick carelessly
into flesh too polite
to admit
how deep
they’ve gone.

What have you done?
Everything is angular,
too precise.
Paying no justice
to the way the skin
stubbornly refuses
to contain
the manic
throbbing
of the
heart.

I love you
I scream to no one, in particular,

I guess.

I just wish
I understood
why.

-Jeff Finn (2013)

Gentle Boy

Wed, 08 May 2013 17:11:52 -0400

I can’t help
you,
gentle boy
could never
would
never
even dream of it.

But I understand
how easy it is to feel

overwhelmed,
kind
gentle boy.
Caught staring
at the flowers
and the way
they bend
their petals against
the sun.

Your eye reaches
out a curious
touch
but retracts too quickly
with too much
better judgement.

You’re too careful,
gentle boy.
You sulk back home
defeated.
The world does not
belong to you
today.
Nor you
today
to the world.

-Jeff Finn (2013)

Some Sound Advice

Wed, 08 May 2013 16:57:14 -0400

Have a drink!
Or is it too demanding
to open every sordid
night
with a little more
blood than beauty?

Must you write
frantic medicated
rhythm
and piss rigid into
every empty grave?

Living free can’t mean
that the knife doesn’t
push deep through
bare bitter skin.

But you can always screw
grace between
his sweet hungry soul
and his always smooth
wine-drunk kiss.

Destroy your will to live
their senseless death.
Their Hell is a raw tongue
wild for a little
ache.

They suffer art and music
but can never actually hear
the scream.

Kill time.
Kill every fucking hour.
And beneath the sense of day,
let madness create the night.

-Jeff Finn (2013)

In Red Ink

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 13:08:04 -0400

There is no life
lived proper
in red ink.

I know that
the tiny bottle of
stashed brilliance
won’t mix
well
with the kind-hearted intentions
of recent pharmaceutical
endeavors but.

Feeling Alive!

Shitting out
humanity’s youth
in the fictitious chasm
of our Bohemian
wetdream.

Alive!

Across the dream,
the poet scribbles
sideways
across his
wrists
while in his head,
he composes
an entirely different verse.
This one doesn’t
rhapsodize inanely
about love
or heartbreak
or the death
of tiny flowers
under the crass indifferent
feet of barefoot
children.

While
a cigarette
dangles
compulsively
from white
undead lips
so soft
to the
touch.

Another minute
of life
on fire
burning
down to the
finger.

No life
no proper life
here
as the red ink
dries
out
and the
stolid black
returns
to claim
his lot.

-Jeff Finn (2013)

Running

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 23:09:00 -0400

Nights like these are made
for counting the miles
between sanity
and our sad naked
misshapen
bodies.

Couldn’t find
the time
to miss you
if I wanted to

With so many times
wasted,
in the wicked nasty
drinking
drunk
spinning around
and around

Trying to lose you in
Another city
Another life
Another another

Around and
around and

Anything
to get
away
again.

And tired suddenly
of everything,
I let you catch me
on nights like this
in the
rain bloated darkness
where the lights put themselves
out
in an angry
snap
of boredom.

and I know
you’re alive again
because
I feel like
dying.

Putting on
my clothes
again,
I run away
a few miles
further
down the road
relieved to be
anywhere
away from the loneliness
of loving you.

-Jeff Finn (2013)

Straight Acting

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 23:43:44 -0400

Bizarre sadistic
twisted
thoughts
armed with
dull rusting razorblades
slice your face
open,
rearranging
those disgusting
bits
into a more
respectable
smile.

They would never suspect
your true nature,
you say
almost proud.

Almost proud,
you wear
your mutilated
patchwork face around
and show
your
self off.

Boasting,
this is the only

I’ve ever been.

-Jeff Finn (2013)

Slight Stinging Regrets

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 23:11:43 -0400

I watched the day die
from my park bench.
It went out violently
in caustic shades of red orange
and an indignant purple.

Lamenting my role
as accessory
to the day’s undoing,
I slunk away,
treading carefully
in the space between
the twilight and
the still too dim
street lamps.

Stumbling upon a
familiar alley,
I stopped to
piss on the corpse
of the jealous drunken lovesick
faggot
that I left to die
some weeks past.

Feeling,
at last,
a bizarre form of
vindication,
I made my
way
home,
while enjoying
the soft smooth silence
of my warm spring
night.

-Jeff Finn (2013)

In Transit

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 22:35:12 -0400

My humanity stretches itself out
across the people-
packed cylinder.
I try to wonder
about their lives
but can’t find the time.

Life outside
is finally trying
again, shaking off
the indolent apathy
of winter.
The sun beams blue
and the sky is warm
to the touch.

A city behind
me shrinks itself
down
into a welcome forgetting.
And home seems
so remarkably distant.
A remoteness so
pure
that nothing at all seems
to belong to the present.

I suspect that
the most beautiful days
are made for those
who belong nowhere.
And it’s such a gorgeous afternoon
to live between lives.

-Jeff Finn (2013)

Awake

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 17:00:00 -0500

It’s 5 am and I feel
like
dying.
But there are
strange
poetic
contortions
occurring in my
brain so
I’ll probably
survive.

I also feel
my feet
becoming
sore.
Then numb.
Then sore again.
A few blocks
further

I guess
I’m heading in the
right
direction.
But who is ever
sure?

For a moment
I think
I’m crying
but it’s just
the snow
clinging tenderly
to my face.

And before
I can stop
myself,
I’m laughing,
uncontrollably
laughing,

finally catching
the joke,
finally reaching
the punchline.

A city of strangers
asleep,
hibernating,
dreaming summer dreams.
And me awake
awake in winter
awake walking nowhere.

Divorced at last
from every
dream.

And the single solace
of surrendering
your dreams
is the chance

to finally live
a waking life.

-Jeff Finn (2013)

Love Poem

Sat, 02 Mar 2013 11:48:00 -0500

Staring at my
self
in the bathroom mirror
while the smoke
dances playfully
between my
lips

I practice
saying
“I love you”
to my cigarette,

and as it
collapses
into its final
cinder,
my heart dries
out
and I
wash my ever
falling
face
with a
newfound sense

of relief.

-Jeff Finn (2013)

2:56 pm, Eastern Standard Time

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 15:14:58 -0500

The early afternoon hands me a pen
and points a resolute finger
in the direction
of an undiscovered
artery.

And yet
I always think
myself
clever
when I cut into
the same collapsing agony
instead.

And as the day
smartly
dresses himself
in those
familiar spurts

I smile

carefully

knowing for a moment
what it is
to be myself.

-Jeff Finn (2013)

Napping in Winter on an Unseasonable Day

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 23:59:02 -0500

Just let me
live
in dreams
for now

delusional
indifferent
to the everything outside
and to the
way
you really
feel.

Just let me
drift back
to sleep
for a little
while
longer.

The morning
is cold
and I’m
just
not ready

to be awake
yet.

-Jeff Finn (2013)

Lady or Tiger?

Sat, 23 Feb 2013 21:29:15 -0500

Tie your past
around your neck
and hurl yourself into
the sea.

If you drown
then you drown.
But if you can still
float,
then everything
leading up to this moment
hasn’t really mattered
at all.

I guess
you can decide for yourself
which fate
is the greater
tragedy.

-Jeff Finn (2013)

My Mistake

Sat, 23 Feb 2013 21:15:11 -0500

The odd
foreign
sensation
of your lips
on my lips,
and the way
your tongue
introduced himself
so awkwardly
to my mouth,

so subtly
destroying
everything.

I might never
forgive you

for making me
so
happy.

-Jeff Finn (2013)

Liar

Thu, 07 Feb 2013 16:52:00 -0500

Writer.
Poet.
These titles
strike my ears
as too grandiose.
More often
I refer to myself
as a
Liar.
An enemy of Truth,
a Lover of
fictitious
people.
And of
Places that
never really
existed.

Not actually.
Not in that exact way.

Things that
could never
actually
happen.

When I actually
stumbled
upon Truth lying
naked
on his
bed, I couldn’t

detach my eyes
from the
unnatural curve
of his
mouth
as he smiled
at me
and his teeth
the stained
white shining
devils

I blinked
and turned
away
and wanted to cry

Truth
the fiend
the enemy
my most hated rival

How impossible
it is to
love
such a beautiful
thing
when you’re just
a base
and loathsome
Liar.

-Jeff Finn (2013)

"I Love You"

Thu, 07 Feb 2013 14:52:13 -0500

Those words,
I can feel your
words
bouncing around my
insides,
ricocheting off
of my finger tips,
slinking down
the awkward curve
of my spine.

I know they settled
for a while
in my stomach
where I tried
and tried
to boil them
alive.
Those words.
Those terrible
words
that you said.
And couldn’t
possibly
have meant.

Finally.
After almost
a decade,
they struck
the scar on my knee
from when I crashed
my bike
when I was twelve.
The pain.
I remember thinking
that I could never
ever
possibly experience
that much pain,

that there’s no
possible way
that this could be
real.

-Jeff Finn (2013)

Sunday Morning

Sun, 06 Jan 2013 11:12:00 -0500

The feeling reemerges;
that single peculiar
sensation always manages
to find his way
back.

I watch with
a sort of
paternalistic pride
as he pulls himself toward
the surface,
through the deprecating dirt
that is
muddied by spilled wine
and phantom tears.

And with a smile,
finally genuine,
finally true,
I call for another
mountain
to bury the
poor fool
again.

-Jeff Finn (2013)

Friday Evening - Time Unknown

Thu, 04 Oct 2012 23:10:00 -0400

I always seem
to wander
away
at the wrong
moment.

Later,
walking home,
I stalk the movements
of a cockroach
under my foot.
And suddenly life
is alive and verdant
once more.

A quick
stomp
and I
am me
again.

Finding my bus,
I retch
discretely
as the city
behind me
wanes in my heart.

-Jeff Finn (2012)

It's Been Too Long

Sun, 23 Sep 2012 12:52:09 -0400

The scraping sound
of pen striking page,
of ink defiling page
returns the flow
of air to my lungs
and blood to my cock.

This is the only
madness
I have left.
The last
possible
hope.

-Jeff Finn