Joseph Buckley

Immortality

You can see farther than your cattle cousin for a reason…

POETS: REACH FOR IMMORTALITY

YOU CANNOT KNOW WHAT IS BEYOND LIFE,

SO FORGET IT.

POETS: WRITE TO LIVE FOREVER,

CHEAT DEATH LIKE SHAKESPEARE,

LIKE SOCRATES

LIKE SIDDHARTA

LIKE HOMER

LIKE DOSTOYEVSKY

LIKE MATTHEW

MARK

LUKE AND

JOHN ENGLOVED BY GOD TO WRITE GOSPEL

LIKE THE FIRST MEN TO CONCEPTUALISE AND CARVE THE SYMBOL FOR FREEDOM INTO WET ANTIQUE SANDS.

YOUR AFTERLIFE’S REWARD WILL BE GRAND AND EVERLASTING

YOUR VISAGE STAMPED FOREVER INTO POSTERITY.

Sunlight

She is dawn
Warm, tight mornings
And soothing evenings
Borne of afternoons:

Entwined
She is the living embodiment of the sun
Summer’s Avatar
Glittering resplendent as a star
At once;

Both immediate and distant
She is of circles, loops and rings

I accept now that she must leave each time we meet

She is dawn, engorged
Winter is over; it is night no more
She has come home to me
And I am cold no more.

RUN

Leave them
And never look back
They were born rooted into the ground.
They have no real souls
And death in their eyes
Thin because they don't deserve the skin to grow
They will be cut down in their groves
Husk-seed-children, crops for the reaper
Leave them.

Don’t ever look back
You won't ever look back
Not even when they order you to freeze
You will melt away, child
For this is a HOT ZONE
And glaciers have no sway over you.

Ignore the rules
Forget the rules
They no longer matter
They existed only in the minds of men
And you are no man
Rules shall hold no sway over you
For you are flesh, wrapped around the dance

NOW!
Run with your brother
Six months old and he has calluses on his feet
You are both hyenas, bloody faced
Slick with dirt and violence, indistinguishable from each other
S'how you both fell from your mother
Onto all fours.

Run till you reach the river,
And then . . .
You’ll find there's a reason you have feet like flippers.

Imagine you are Elvis
Shake your legs in rhythm with the earth's ending
Imagine you are Apollo, child
And fly away to concrete-d and right angle-d lands.

You were made for Greencards, passports and plastic wrapped choc-o-lat

Son of Steve

I am become my Father

Breaking hearts

Heart wasting away

Projecting my pain unto others

Archive of these moments spent enhancing this lie

I am you speaking to you

Hoping that these moments don’t define me

Hoping that I can bury these emotions and memories

Build again where they were

Beginning to dislike the person I am becoming

I am you speaking to you

I may wear my mother’s melanin tinted skin

But by the way I mimic your absent actions

I know my mind is yours

I am you speaking to you

Act like I act at seventeen

Forget lessons learned

Never look back

Blame others for my failings

Plaster your face over my cracks and flaws

See I can’t live forever

So I

Created you in my image

I am you part two

And it hurts at times because you look so much like your mother

Slowly over time I begin to become my father