Home // May.28.2018 // Eric Valor

Three Poems, from Hamachi Eyes

LOCKED‑IN BLUES

Ever since you left me 
I’m unable to move 
Frozen and flaccid
I got the locked‑in blues

I lie in bed
No connection to my head 
Wishing I could be 
Somewhere else instead

My tired eyes 
Are compromised 
My hands are tied 
My legs petrified

Don’t want to be here anymore 
But I’m too afraid to
Go back home

I got the locked‑in the locked‑in blues 
I got the locked‑in the locked‑in blues
I got the locked‑in the locked‑in blues . . .


You took my breath away 
My identity too
You took it all
I got the locked‑in blues

I can’t eat
I barely sleep 
I just sit
And silently weep

My tired eyes 
Are compromised 
My hands are tied 
My legs petrified

Don’t want to be here anymore 
But I’m too afraid to
Go back home

I got the locked‑in the locked‑in blues 
I got the locked‑in the locked‑in blues
I got the locked‑in the locked‑in blues . . .


Just a prisoner of myself 
Just a prisoner of myself
Just a pitiful prisoner of myself

ON A LUNCHTIME WALK

Freak show dirt tube bizarro-zoo smell the metropolitan decay it smells like figs like the months spent in Ankara only somehow it smelled better there hey lady does the wall talk back kick the plastic cup into the gutter so it can be with its family as the old green Buick slides by with the sound of rust and missing cylinders blessing the street with the smoke of its bowels glass encrusted fingers point skyward the city has an edifice complex Asian jewelry store next to Mexican restaurant next to Woolworths and pawnshop around the corner everybody jaywalk and Jesus needs a new pair of shoes not to mention a bath the airliner screams like a furious god come to Earth while little children give themselves enemas on the fountains in the park I wonder if meter maids know how much we hate them be quiet stomach we’ll eat soon the horse shakes its ears and farts and the cop on top does the same the sun blazes in a cloudless sky reminding me that solar power is really nuclear power is that how gods wage war yuppie bar serving beer and nouveau cuisine next door to biker bar serving beer and stale popcorn with Vietnam veteran who never went to war standing in the doorway asking me for a dollar for a cup of coffee that only costs a quarter but they don’t serve coffee here heatwaves roll across an asphalt ocean I wish I could surf them boy wouldn’t that dog be surprised if the fire hydrant pissed back and the tree laughs but the dog starts sniffing it too and I hope the pigeons are grateful to us for erecting all these statues for them brother squirrel displays its newfound nut and gives me a cyclopean stare and then disappears around the corner and suddenly I’m here.

LIFE

There is no Heaven
No Valhalla
No noble warriors’ home.

Don’t put your trust
In a fairy tale
From some old dusty tome.

The key to life is living
The only reward is certain death
And I’ll live my life
The way I want
Until my dying breath.

So cleave to me tightly
Oh sister of life
Until we’re dead & gone,
For we shall not meet again in heaven
But rather blank oblivion.


Click here to read an interview of Eric Valor conducted by NERObooks contributing editor Paul Rowe >>

Banner graphic: A scan (cropped) of Plate 20, showing Sagittarius. Used here under the terms the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. From A celestial atlas: comprising a systematic display of the heavens in a series of thirty maps: illustrated by scientific description of their contents and accompanied by catalogues of the stars and astronomical exercises, by Alexander Jamieson, published in London by G. & W.B. Whittaker, 1822. Sourced from the United States Naval Observatory Library; in the public domain.

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