WHAT WEEKLY

Four Poems by Stephen Michael McDowell

04 April 2013

★ Timmy Reed

1
i am sitting in a moon base eating something dry
that is flavored like banana
and this thing
the process of eating and tasting this thing
makes me think of you
not the flavors (you don’t taste like banana)
(you taste like how a violet smells but with a hint of tangerine)
i am wasted
dried banana moon food
infused with mescaline
laced with memories of you dipping your hair
into the tub and talking to me
loudly over the pouring faucet
asking me how my day was
i remember standing in the doorframe
wearing a big coat
staring and not answering and grinning at you
i could smell how you taste
from the door
because the steam carried it into my nose

2
crying into the bath tub
(i want to hear someone say your name)
anyone can do it as long as
it isn’t you or me or your new boyfriend
i’m talking to a different you now
the one i like and (whose name i don’t want to hear)
because i feel sad thinking of your name (and distance)
what if i told you there is a plaque i received
for getting kicked in the balls enough times
to make me sterile first
before all of my friends
so they gave me an award (marry me)

3
unsure how my neck works
like, i can feel it working;
my field of vision shifts
but…
i guess i don’t know this
about any part of my body
a friend once said, while on mescaline
‘joints, our hands have so many little joints’
and i felt awe
maybe even joy
(i still hate myself)
for what felt like, the first time
about
‘unconscious movements’
and ‘noumenal whim’

4
i am going to sleep
and dream of my head inverting
becoming a sort of
4th dimensional convex ornament
with an inverted brain in the middle
(of the universe)
in dreaming i can experience this
but it usually feels bad and scary

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