The World

The poet who wants to express the world
ends up writing a sentence
broken into small fragments
like an insect
leaping
from place
to place.

This work by Scott Stewart is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Balboa Park, August 2011

Settled in the shade of a tree,
next to tourists talking of Istanbul,
I trek with my pen and mind
through the imagination before me.

Baudelaire, my backwards companion,
guides me to the depths of pain.
I rebel. The children swim in the fountain.

I am distracted and detracted.
A woman asks me, in a thick accent,
to use my mobile phone. Her boy
sits close to me and he jumps up to leave.

Two men play the guitar in the distance.
I cannot hear them, but I assume it is beautiful.
"Right there! Right there!" a child yells and points.

And I am right there, absorbed in it all.
The wind gusts and I am lost.
Teenagers laugh maniacally.
I can hear the music now.

In this park, it is easy to sit
and reflect on humankind -
constantly in a state of movement
and rest, a mix of language
and cultures, united under one mission:
to be joyful in this moment.

This work by Scott Stewart is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

I Clothe This Page

Slowly, letter by letter, I clothe this page.
I have given it a bath, carefully washed
off the cliches, and dried it in the sun.

My hands are soft and pruney, yet calloused
from years of writing on virginal, milky white
paper - each word plucked from the shadows.

Three ships

Three ships come in at night,
protected by a bank of fog
over the bay.

The ships are silent. The wood creaks
like the wind in a forest.

It reminds me that time
is infinite, but we continue
to decay without thought.

The three ships anchor and are still.

My breath, my breath remains.

I want to write a poem

I want to write a poem,
but my legs won't reach the ground.

I want to write a poem,
but there's iodine in my coffee.

I want to write a poem,
but he never smiles back
and the air is too polluted
and the band can't play
and my curtain's always closed
and the inspiration isn't coming.

I want to write a poem
so bad in my heart
but my brain says stop.

I want to write a poem
but Prince already did it
and some other people wrote
a poem the exact same way
so I might as well give up
before I even start.

This work by Scott Stewart is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Luminous and Hungry for a Revolution

Luminous and hungry for a revolution,
Lucy sits, waiting patiently
in a park, drinking water,
watching children swing effortlessly.

Persistent and tired of the turmoil,
Paul finishes carving a piece of wood,
that looked like a fish to begin with,
into Botticelli's Birth of Venus.

Restful and invigorated by the universe,
Rebecca lays next to her fourth love,
her hair greying, her heart swooning,
her breasts, her breaths.

Hunkered and weary of failure,
Harold plants petunias in his garden,
whistling a monotonous tune,
daydreaming of monkeys in the zoo.

Interested and hopeful for the future,
I write about people I have never met,
listening to popular indie music,
fingertips searching for the next word.

This work by Scott Stewart is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Isolationism

I imagine I am drinking coffee and smoking a cigarette.
You are curled up in my bed, dreaming.

I am drinking coffee and smoking
because I am a tortured artist
and must be unhealthy.

You are curled up and dreaming
because you are coquette
and forgotten among the libraries
of the 1920s.

I imagine I am smoking a cigarette
and living in the 1920s
because these are times when America
regretted nothing and danced
in the streets.

I am smoking and drinking coffee.
My mouth does not smell great
and there is little I can do about it
because dentistry in the 1920s
is not a priority.

You turn over in your sleep.
I watch you turn over
then return to my writing.

My typewriter ribbon is dry.
I must replace it soon.
I can barely make out the words
I have written.

This work by Scott Stewart is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.