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    American Papyrus: 25 Poems
    American Papyrus: 25 Poems
    American Papyrus: 25 Poems
    Ebook77 pages42 minutes

    American Papyrus: 25 Poems

    By Steven David Justin Sills

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    Read preview
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateNov 26, 2013
    American Papyrus: 25 Poems

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      Book preview

      American Papyrus - Steven David Justin Sills

      Project Gutenberg's An American Papyrus: 25 Poems, by Steven Stills

      This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

      ** This is a COPYRIGHTED Project Gutenberg eBook, Details Below ** ** Please follow the copyright guidelines in this file. **

      Title: An American Papyrus: 25 Poems

      Author: Steven Stills

      Posting Date: August 22, 2012 [EBook #4545] Release Date: October, 2003 First Posted: February 6, 2002

      Language: English

      *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN AMERICAN PAPYRUS: 25 POEMS ***

      Copyright (C) 2002 by Steven Sills

      AN AMERICAN PAPYRUS: 25 POEMS by Steven Sills

      Post Annulment 2

      Afferent, the city bus cramps to the curb and brakes

      through

      Solipsistic muteness

      With an exhaltation startled and choking.

      As the sun blazes upon the terminal's

      Scraped concrete

      The shelved rows of the poor men

      Hear the sound die on the pavement

      In a gradual dying echo.

      A cigarette succumbs to the voice as

      Carrion brought to life; all the tattered people

      awaken;

      And a man spits toward the tire of the bus,

      But misses.

      And as he watches his own spit vanish

      From the hard crest of the world,

      And silently scrapes his lunch pail against

      A corner of a metallic bench as if expecting the pale

      to bleed…

      And hoping it would bleed…he tries to remember the

      angles

      He and his wife stood to project

      The intermingled shadows that both

      Had labeled as their marriage.

      He enters the second bus:

      Its coolness sedating the skin that

      Overlaps his troubled mind.

      His thoughts pull together

      Like the light, cool flow of the air conditioning.

      He feels a little pacified.

      He knows the shadow's intangible depth:

      Its vastness having overpowered him these months

      Until he could not reach the logic that told him

      To find himself outside its barriers.

      As he stares out of the window

      He wonders why she has left.

      How could she have left without indication

      When he has remained angled toward work

      So that he and his wife can stay alive?

      In the bus window he sees his diaphanous face—the

      windows

      Of the Hilton, where he has a job in maintenance,

      Piercing solidly through its head. He rings the bell.

      The idea of her not home, and legally annulled

      From his life—her small crotch not tightened to his

      desperate

      Thrusts—makes him feel sick. He gets down from the

      bus.

      He goes to work. He suddenly knows that being in love

      is not love.

      ———————————————————————————————————————

      Earth

      I use her earth to plant my seed—

      My limbs twisting around the collective molecules,

      Trying to dig in.

      Only the obscurity of my body

      Presses so fully that it is neither

      Body nor bed nor the intersection of both,

      But euphoric traction;

      And then, planted and repulsed,

      Only the seam of backbone minutely faces her,

      That bed of earth.

      With all conscious force

      I breathe the aloneness that intangibly defines the

      Air. I swallow its ambrosia

      Of depth and ask myself

      Why I ever married the woman.

      There is void.

      Then a hollow answer calls my name and says "it was

      time."

      I realize myself in movement, parting the scene.

      I use what has been planted for the reaping—

      My suit tucks me into its structure of cotton;

      And soon a building will be again the structure

      Around men of cotton suits, pushing a product.

      Lost, I drink my coffee alone on

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