Quiet Morning at Duck-Lake; I Am a Pathetic Drunk-Driver and Deserve No Love, Please Ignore Me for the Rest of Eternity, Thank You. 

[I]

After night of selfsold selfswording having purchased at the pub lamentations
lamentations of recollection canopy road darknesses apocryphal greybeards the Spanish mosses
gesturing midnight geese chilling incantatory midnight dew on oaks dropping onto my automobile
dripping into my ears and heart mistyeyed & tearlike as wax hardening down candelabra I drunk
drove halfhaphazardly alcoholed and guilted far beyond gruntled grunting and sighing singing
myself a myopic mercenary unsworn from self and anything nondestructive

 [II]

If it was still night this lake would be blackwater and reflective,
the necessary plenty of the moon’s glow could make out my rippled face.
But the sun today presents itself firsthand with wind. The breezed water ripples unreflective.
This morning provides me reflection and its ducks look cheerful and so I feel a little bit closer
with serenity, if ever so briefly, I learn
to stitch up my white-knuckle transgressions.

 [III]

Afternoon imago cries sound hymnal and anxiously penitent. I hear them as a yearning.
I too feel a lone humming most days growing louder inside my sternum, vacillate
between repetitive acts of sin and contrition, loathsome oscillating chest-engine aroused
by five-finger fillet until erratic piston dives deep into another knuckle, something thin,
some liniment that keeps me together, experiences a severance at night, and often I am fearful
of how capable I am                        with knives in the dark

John Blake Oldenborg currently attends Florida State University, where he is working toward an M.A. in English Literature, Media, and Culture. His favorite pizza topping is black olives. He has two wonderful cats who constantly fight one another. He is scared of the screaming guy from the band Death Grips.