-----
Red Eden π
When I see groups of
Guy friends out
the museum, the botanical garden
It makes me laugh, I don’t know why
They will tell me about
Nothin in particular
Which is the sign
I have not spoken to them in awhile
I’m getting excited about this
Neon monolith business
I’m excited about the neon monolith
I have to make
Sometimes when I open
A raw book of poetry
I self-immolate
reading “calloused hands”
On the street
There is a part of me..
Really hopes to overhear
The new and vital secret
Alpha Centauri
Aberrant minds
The American Educational System
I pluck these out on the porch
A kid skates by
Padded up on blades
I can’t even decide on dinner
Or what to wear
All children are innocent
Because of their ignorance
Everything is still..
so piss easy
May data centers
Befoul the air
Surrounding the cloche
Their souls reside
Why am I
venomous barb
in a mammal
Maybe, unfortunately
I am dreamer,
actually..
Perfect Lives
I sat down the sunset bench over Jersey City
Everyone wearing athleisure stood up
left when I lit a cigarette
Except for this alo bro
Wrenching the cigarette out of my mouth
Scolding, ‘I don’t know if art should Be this ejaculate spurt
prompted by a Brief contact with nature
When you battle yr old habit of dereliction
Invoke dreams
May their residue dress the salad of yr experience’
A brief encounter with nature…
Is this street nature?
First, I’d have to find the bottom
Have you ever seen a ripple
Dark well, have you ever drank water
without fluoride or microplastic
The words come horrible, sputum and glottal stops
They will all be throwaway lines
until you find the poet attractive
I lay down my life’s serenity
I used to ride a garbage truck to school
Yr email finds me erased
I am finally free of my muse
I hoist a scimitar from a casket of pearls
The ruins of the Barbary coast end up smelling a lot like agave
I flash it up to their throats and threaten them
Menacing ‘I am at the zenith of my 30s’
Actually the coast smells like sandalwood and fish
Enough 2am affirmations
I’m not brave enough to paint figuratively
My room is strewn with dead plants
Casualties of my blackened thumb
Asking tedious questions radically
‘These are the questions No one is asking’
I burn the candle at both ends
I have to buy a new candle
Pauline
A spiritual healer tries to remove the plaque
Her name is Perfect Gin Raven Moss
She is sure it isn’t a curse
Her heavy fall of black hair
matted with flies
She holds a séance for my love lemniscate
Death visits me
As a scorpion in a dream
A visionary
Not in some hot air complimentary way
But one prone to seeking madness
She intones, there is no reason to stay that long
Where? On this island
Scotch bonnet shell
A baby’s annelid arms
The sea makes them seem extraterrestrial
I am a louse in the fourth world
The colonizer of my own memories
But soon, My summer goddess is returning
From the island of sun and cats
Sometimes long silences
Pour gulfs between us
And she would not speak
Until consulting a book that listed out
Every color
And there was a point
I coulda sworn I loved you
Harvest
in the theatre darklight
your eyes pool black a deer.
Guide you under your small
umbrella into the neon
there are magenta sparks illuminating
now your eyes dark green.
In a just time, a world out of hell
smiling fairwife your arms so slender in
your yellow shirt, you’d wear a sweater in summer
a wetsuit in the sun, now tell me the dream.
in the dream alley, she turned again.
And in the way of dreams, animal light blurred
any hard edges, the alley foreshortened into glances,
escapes of air. In the unsaid, she beckoned, turning
her back. She pulled down a rancid khaki skirt—
there amongst the amethyst debris, cans, shadow brick pooled
with lights from no source,
revealing her hermaphroditism.
in amongst these fantasies, it brought on a gauze,
a humidity to swim
It filled the throat like lukewarm broth.
The gravity of an hour
will build into a second
passionless fear, shutting out other destinies
now cease all
question
-----
Gram Hummell is a carbon-based lifeform and guitar player residing in Queens, NY. His most recent chapbook 100 Skys was published by Big A Little A press.