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.

The Natural Progression of Things

The natural progression of things.
Fall into a pile of the everlasting.
Brush against the mistakes of yesterday.
Let go of the grass stains
and the forgotten memories.
Let go of the literal and anonymous.
Let go of the melodic merchants.
Become the murmuring in a monastery.
Become the horizon,
stretching endlessly for the next.
Become the stop of the hammer.
Become the time.

All that is reachable is limited.
All that is limited is questionable.
All that is questionable is hidden.
Therefore, love with all your heart.
Bare your chest to the latitude of the spin.

I walk towards the infinite.
The knock of a stranger,
asking for one more metaphor
to rest his head upon.

Leaves, pressed in books,
remind me of your smile.

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

The dust, the rumination...

The dust, the rumination
peeks from between my fingers,
a melancholy mistake of hair,
listening and whispering recycled
pleasantries with a smile.

I have forgotten where I began,
mindful of the stop sign,
a peaceful approach to living,
the unending questions:
how often does lightning underwhelm?

And again and again.
Upward and until the end, it seems.
First things first, vanquish aches
and pains. Then tackle the bigger,
louder anomalies
like tax evasion
and digestive problems.

Little by little, a cliche
in its own right (so is that)
you begin to be distracted
into elegantly folding paper.
This becomes a reason to breathe,
making shapes from simple paper.
Fold and fold
these tiny squares.

Mustache remedies and literature,
wasteful yearnings and thunderous boastings,
these are a few of my favorite things.

Yesterday, I wondered if I could find art
in everyday places. Then I found you.

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

White Wolf

A white wolf wanders through the streets,
the heated concrete its new home.

Does he think of his family?
Does he long for his family?

White wolf, I cannot repel from this place.
I am transfixed as you pass.
The world rotates
and I rotate with it.

Does he hunger for truth like I do?
Does he look into the void and wonder?

White wolf, you are free to run
along the length of the beach,
yet I find you sniffing trashcans
in an alleyway.
You are thinking about where
your next piece of food will come from
and whether or not tonight you will die.

Your blue eyes reflect the sun
as you turn to look at me.

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

Poetry, a Rebuttal

for John Reuter

Poetry is so simple, you say,
that anyone can do it.
The poetry world is full
of people who don't have anything
to talk about, their stories
aren't interesting, their poetry
unfathomably bad, you say.

Since it is so easy to write poetry,
I want to write you this poem.
I didn't take me long to write,
it's not full of similes and assonance.
Though perhaps "assonance"
has an assonant quality to it.
And perhaps "unfathomably bad"
is an analogy of some kind.
And perhaps I can't avoid being a poet
as much as you cannot avoid
being an intellectual.

Poetry is as old as language itself.
It is in the drinking water.
It is the air that a baby breathes
for the first time, coughing.
It is deep within our bones.
It clutches us to remember it
every night before we rollover to sleep.

Poetry (complex mistress and forgotten
utopia), there is a monster at your gates.
He spits fire and quietly decays
the foundation of your home.
He is the holy Intellectual, pious
to the god Aristotle and all
his linear plot structures.

And yet, the glass blowers blow
the kilns still fire
the canvasses dance with paint
the blank page yearns for words.

It is these things that give me solace.
The progression of art is alive
and it breathes in poetry
like gust of wind,
filling the lungs with music.

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

Yes! I Cry Out

Yes! I cry out. Yes!
The little mouse
and restful eyes
lead me to linger
at the gate once more.

Yes! I cry out. Yes!
A million times yes.
My need to hunger again.
My need to hunger again.

Yes! I am the atom.
I am the flesh.
I am the organs.
I am the I.

Yes! Thankfully yes,
yet she says no
and I still smile
like the grass in a field seeding
like a hill offset by rain
like the trees, multitude of trees
like the beer fermenting in the closet
like the echo of shoes on the pavement
like the first born child saved.

Yes! I still smile
the earth below me
reaching towards existence
like a million and million particles
maybe more - explained in a number
of ways, but always returning
to that one reoccurring dream:

Yes! My mouth bloodied and silent
among the endless road, not
before the handful of ladybugs
pulls me upward to the stretched
ocean of the sky, chaos
in a drinking fountain, softly bubbling.

Yes! I cry out. Yes!

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

Priest of Poetry

for Soroya

Have I taken a vow
of poverty for my art?
Reading sacred texts
and holy men, I do not doubt
that I have become a priest
of poetry.

"I am a nun to theatre,"
she muses.
There is passion in her eyes,
her concentrated gaze
peering into me.
I am naked.
“Then I am a priest of poetry,”
I smile back.
“How poetic,” she says,
emptying her coconut porter.

Years of celibacy, it seems, carved
on belts, silence in the church
of my mind.

I give my life to you, poetry.
I will scrawl notes in your margins.
I will paint cathedrals with words.
I will take communion every day:
it is with the breaking of the spine
of the book that we remember you;
it is with the drinking of verse
that we remember you.
I will sweat rhythm,
sing stanza, whirl dizzily.
I will stand on the street corner,
shouting the names of the dead.

I am a priest of poetry.
I carry my bible with me everywhere,
mumbling its incantations
to the wall.

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