Disclaimer: this was inspired by Colleen Hoover’s ‘The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes”
Maybe she flew away
Got lost in the snow
If she’s gone gray
We’ll never know
Did his love catch fire?
Did he go insane?
He was admired
But was he in pain?
Why did she run?
Where would she be?
They had lots of fun
I guess she could see
The man that he is
Who he’d became
A puzzle, a quiz
It’s all a game
The weapons will try
He has somewhere to be
She yells from the sky
“You can’t catch me”
With neither strength nor endurance,
I fall short of the ideal dance practice.
With distance, evolution, and past habits caressing
and strangling me like bloodthirsty ghosts,
I peek in to forums, anxieties on display like a museum exhibit,
and I peruse among them, not quite in the group, not quite out,
unable to grapple with my own fear of the future.
My friend’s art show is today, and I am late. I wanted to write a poem today.
My name is Samuel Collins Hicks. Please, call me Sam. I’m local to Central Kentucky, but I have all my teeth hahahaha and I can play 35 to 45 cuz I don’t have much hair hahahaha
Oh I’ve always wanted to act hahaha the adults took me to see plays when I was a kid and they told me (us, they told all of us) “you can be whatever you want” and I said “I want to be the guy in the plays the adults take the kids to see” and you said “you can’t be that” but I’d see the people on the stage when they took me to see the plays and think “you can. see? you can.” I’m non-union, which means you can legally afford me, and I’m not represented, which means you can illegally afford me and I won’t know any better. I’m willing to shave my mustach, shave my head, wear polyester suits, wear car crash makeup that stains my skin and stops me from getting anything like lunch into my mouth (it’s gonna be another six Diet Coke day, and we don’t wrap until 5a.m.), willing to do stunts, do fights, do falls, do anything basically except hang dong or show hole, and honestly if we’re talking money, everything is negotiable for the man who wants to be an artist. The point is I want this more than the next guy, want it worse than the next guy, will smile harder than the next guy while I’m standing around at craft services trying to grab a(nother) Snickers before someone sees me and once I have it (and the cameras roll, and I do whatever the script says) I’ll know how special it is because I’ve always wanted it and waited for it and now I’ve got it, and that’s the first time that’s ever happened for me. And now its another Friday night and me and my closet and my ring light are looking for another chance to put on a show, and someone who might want to buy a ticket.
Saint Genesius, pray for us.
Armor-plated from head to toe,
Watchful eyes peering from behind metal,
Hands gloved since touch itself is too great a risk,
He guards the same gate every night,
Same steps to and fro,
Routines rarely disrupted by a shout or a stranger,
Which threaten the safety of this repetition.
These disturbances pass through the night
And leave the city still alive.
But should one wish harm,
He is ready to put himself in front:
Spear and shield in hand,
Prepared to fight evil-
-or die trying-
Since living with failure would be too much to bear.
The Second Mouse Gets the Cheese:
In the end you do what the voice tells you.
It says forget, you forget.
It says to begin again, you begin again.
(Louise Gluck from “March” NYer 3/31/08)
1) November 1996
The first time we met
for a certain kind of knowledge
you appeared rail thin
from rejection, stood
unclothed
in front of my mirror,
curved and firm
brushing your hair
as the preamble
to my embrace.
Mea culpa, mea culpa,
I intoned from beneath the sheets.
Afterwars, we looked
out the window to see
Venus holding her place above Jupiter,
you began pacing back and forth,
pouring out your elation
from a dipper of intoxicating
liquor…..a new, not duplicitous flavor.
2) October 2015
Again we have the sky of fall:
summer triangle bending over,
the great Scorpion inches away
from the western trees, dogs barking
up the darkness of the south.
Our lovers’ pact is scarred like old Samsonite,
but still intact, a part of the luggage we carry
on our Autumn trip to the fading colors
of old mountains.
We’ve told the mirror Good Bye.
Our hostel is a tent,
your form is rounded and full of intent,
I’ve become stubbled with stubborn ferns.
We see the twin dippers
shine through our translucent awning.
No one can be forced to love,
we let the earth drag us into it.
3) June 2026
From different rooms the night
envelopes us with the silence
of 10,000 fireflies. With our up & down
we’re Romeo and Juliet in reverse.
Before any light in the east
we meet on the front varanda,
kiss on the lips, find our way
toward the smootness of the old road.
warm kiss breath
steaming with the growl,
spring tongue, meat suit fluff
smooth pant whispering
sweet recalls— like little blooms.
Brindled fur ruffled
the gray wolf paused
sniffing the Rocky Mountain
chinook for food, predators,
and interlopers.
Despite the tenets
of half a hundred
broken treaties, the
gunfights of sheepers
and cattlefolk over water,
and alluvial tailings
of copper & silver miners
rearranging landscapes;
small packs survive.
Lean. Wary. Watchful.
In the distance an
elk crunches the
wind warmed underbrush.
One by one wolves
ghost the landscape,
amber eyes beacons
of hope, quiet strides
of reclamation.
I technically didn’t miss a day,
But my revision was exactly at midnight.
Erasing what was June 10th and making it June 11th.
Why did I have to change that word?
It’s poetry— you can make up the rules and the spellings.
I set a goal to make a poem post daily,
and I failed.
Defeated at its finest.
I’m trying to not beat myself up,
But, I mean, who are our own worst critics?
I should’ve written earlier in the day.
I shouldn’t have spent so much time revamping my website to prepare for a relaunch;
reclaiming my space,
and retroactively placing my company at year seven after a four year gap.
I know it sounds ridiculous that I’m crying over spilled poem milk.
I also know there’s no prize for submitting every single day.
I actually missed the first two days of the challenge,
But that wasn’t as bad because I hadn’t started.
I had my heart set on breaking my streak from last year,
And sharing my works for 27 days straight.
The disappointment I feel for disappointing myself is enough to walk away completely.
He told me to shake a leg,
and I did.
Then he got angry
that I hadn’t sped up.
But it’s hard to go
fast when your leg
is shaking.
He should know this.
