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Stream of consciousness #1:He stuttered the words “resume” and...

Mon, 20 May 2013 13:48:00 -0400

Stream of consciousness #1:

He stuttered the words “resume” and “environment.”
Moved from a paradise continent with its brochures in
western world travel agents, that didn’t feature the
rubbish on the beach, to the smog and the steel.
Got caught up in something, don’t know what.
Too young. Too much. Too soon. Too late.
Learning a second language is a bitch.
Thoughts you can’t get out for lack of the words.
Sounds like torture. Building up. Up. Up.
It burst out the pockmarks in his arms.
His vaccination. Quiets the roar.
Neil Young playing on a radio bolted to the cupboard,
of a motel somewhere, in some-other-place.
This running away thing isn’t what it’s made out to be.
Can’t run from the stuff in your head. Gritty.
Amorphous and stuck in the viscosity,
like the molasses black nights back home.
Well, not back home. Just back in the city.
How do people stand their own company?
I bet they sleep, or read Burroughs.
Junkies become like cats. Afraid of water.
I think that’s what he said.
Shh, go to sleep. Under the sheets, the voices
aren’t as loud. Speaking from the corners of
other peoples mouths.

Spread your butter thin; I relish the companyof those who write in parksand coffee shops.I smile at...

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 03:14:00 -0400

Spread your butter thin;

I relish the company
of those who write in parks
and coffee shops.
I smile at the last sliver of their grounding humanness
pulling at them inexorably,
to sit in a cacophony of spritely white noise,
to remember what people are like,
for their books, they might tell you.
If you’re lucky,
you’ll catch a moment of surrender—

A deep sigh.
A wayward glance.

And you know that is not a person you can pin down,
for they have no haven and they have no home.
They eat sparingly from this world,
for this is world of mere morsels.

By night;The vivid streaks of buzzing, ersatz lights,emanating from the concrete expanse,wavering...

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 01:15:00 -0400

By night;

The vivid streaks of buzzing, ersatz lights,
emanating from the concrete expanse,
wavering without certainty on the river;
the creative streak of the blue collar worker.

Old skin; I wasn’t there then,but she assures me she’s shed her old skin.Left it between...

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 12:59:11 -0400

Old skin;

I wasn’t there then,
but she assures me
she’s shed her old skin.
Left it between the couch cushions
to be forgotten with the small change
and the popcorn seeds.

Not one drop; The pipers that play me my regrets have lowered their weapons,but there’s still...

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 11:39:00 -0400

Not one drop;

The pipers that play me my regrets have lowered their weapons,
but there’s still miles between the pillow and my dreams, darling.
Are you sure you want to be the one that warms the cold side of my bed?

(c) Mitchell Beanland, 2013.

Poetic therapy;With every word I write, I realise the profound importance of keeping to the regular...

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 11:16:24 -0400

Poetic therapy;

With every word I write,
I realise the profound importance
of keeping to the regular dosage
of self-prescribed medications.

(c) Mitchell Beanland, 2013.

Every writer has a broken heart;Behind every writers ribs,beats a dusty, paperweight of a heart,...

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 10:52:00 -0400

Every writer has a broken heart;

Behind every writers ribs,
beats a dusty, paperweight of a heart,
that once cried for the reprieve
that first brought his pen to paper.

Billow;A grey city has caught in my lungs, old friend.I’ve found myself ground into the...

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 07:10:00 -0400

Billow;

A grey city has caught in my lungs, old friend.
I’ve found myself ground into the pavement with the lowly beggars,
swallowing foreign change to keep hanging on.
Never thought I’d find myself standing in row, old boy.
And after you’re done earning your keep
you let the sea run over your hurts every night on sunset,
while mine fester in the steely cold places,
with pipes and mechanisms churning.
Whirring ungodly.
It is sin, friend.
It is sin.

(c) Mitchell Beanland, 2013.

Hurry;Frail town.Two bolt hubcap town.I roll through,past sun blistered fencesand corner storeswith...

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 21:25:59 -0500

Hurry;

Frail town.
Two bolt hubcap town.

I roll through,
past sun blistered fences
and corner stores
with their windows barred.
A part of me wishes
I could return to the simplicity
of just admiring the sun in it’s sky,
and watching beetles crawl through the lawn,
but we’re swept up.
So we roll through towns
and look for the road signs,
bent and leading to the next place.
Dead men don’t grin,
from in the suits you bury them with,
so I’ll stop by the roadside,
and just breath.
I haven’t in so long.
I’ve been so long in my head
that it’s become cluttered,
like the floor of my car,
with fast food containers.

Broil: Do you feel it creeping?It builds up in you like a new love,twisting up and churning around...

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 21:03:54 -0500

Broil:

Do you feel it creeping?
It builds up in you like a new love,
twisting up and churning around
the dust behind your ribs.
But shrug off the months of stagnancy,
now’s your time to catch your
prize butterfly and pin it down.

(c) Mitchell Beanland, 2013.

Reverie;One cold, dismal afternoon in May, I put down my book and marked the page.Let my mind fall...

Thu, 07 Feb 2013 09:42:00 -0500

Reverie;

One cold, dismal afternoon in May,
I put down my book and marked the page.
Let my mind fall into a deep pool of reverie.

For the world had not been so kind,
to a man so charitable with his heart and time,
and the old habits scratched from beyond the attic door.

For the longest while I drifted numb,
stupidly so, into the barrel of a gun.
for I let myself remember your infectious warmth.

It pulsed with my heart and caressed me there,
while I sat in my old mans leather arm chair
I felt those soft fingers again, sliding down my chest.

At this point the book fell down,
off my lap and onto the ground,
For the cold had put you irreparably on my mind.

The mere and dear thought of you alone,
took me from glassy eyed rut to heavens mighty throne,
For those fingers that once stroked my hair belonged to her.

You know very well the girl I mean.
The one that blesses and haunts every sleepers dreams.
The woman that will be the birth or the death of you.

Did you know that whenever I had pondered love,
as a child, you were there in my mind to sweep me up.
But now those soft spoken lips only kiss me behind my eyes.

It was there and then I fell down immutably deep.
Into that reverie, lulled by my slowing heartbeat.
Because if I couldn’t have you here, I’d see you somewhere else, someday.

I held my hands over the coals
of what was left of my dimming soul,
I smiled and hoped that wherever you were, you thought of me.

I hope then and there that you’d check the time,
and know the seconds passing were the last of mine,
so I could know some small part of you was here with me.

Oh, it feels close now, I must prepare.
My last thoughts will be the sparks, like roman candles in the air,
of my long gone love, who’s off kissing the tongue of the road.

I just wrote this so that you could know,
I forgive you love, and love, I let you go.
But you took something of mine with you when you left me here.

I’m afraid you took most of me with you.
Left my shell here to wait and rot and stew
in my burning love, thats leaking from my chest onto the new carpet.

Deaths looming tall on my doorstep, babe.
I must go now, I have a deal with fate,
but I’ll be here waiting for you if the cops don’t find me first.

I’m afraid that’s all I was ever good for.
So here I’ll be, in the chair by the door.
If you ever come back for the last of the things you left here.

I guess there’s not really all that much,
just a cassette player and a bike and some rust
oh, and an old tired man that vowed to love you till death did him part.

(c) Mitchell Beanland, 2013.

Leave summer for the boys; I threw out all my figure drawings at fourteen and a half. The ones the...

Fri, 30 Nov 2012 08:39:00 -0500

Leave summer for the boys;

I threw out all my figure drawings at fourteen and a half.
The ones the boys with salty hair and toothy grins kept in dusty cabinets with rose-tinted glass, hidden behind their jaundiced ribs.

It was around the time I noticed my soul creaking
like a bookshelf empty of classics
or a door in a house left slightly ajar.
There was ink in the marrow of my bones.

Late at night, my heart plays downtempo songs,
about Saturn and his slumbering sons.
I almost can’t bare to write another word uninspired,
but I’ve been hiding your smile in chapters of my books unaware.
There’s a vividness to the ghost of you I etched into my head,
that will be either the death or the birth of me.

I’ll light another cigarette for you,
and fill warped notepads with that vivid wanderlust you’d have in your eye.
Together we’d wear our old book smell
and leave summer for the boys and their cars.

Bed head; Today, everything seemed cast in the blue hues of a new bruise.(c) Mitchell Beanland,...

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 05:13:06 -0500

Bed head;

Today, everything seemed cast in the blue hues of a new bruise.

(c) Mitchell Beanland, 2012.

Cigarettes and poetry;What is it with smoking in poetry?It’s as if it slowly became the...

Sun, 18 Nov 2012 03:55:00 -0500

Cigarettes and poetry;

What is it with smoking in poetry?
It’s as if it slowly became the (heavily cliched) vice of a troubled soul.
Whatever happened to good old fashioned bad judgment?

Sold my sunday shoes;I could almost see the fundamentalist up-tights sipping english breakfast in...

Sun, 18 Nov 2012 03:44:00 -0500

Sold my sunday shoes;

I could almost see the fundamentalist up-tights sipping english breakfast in their sunday best in the back of my Father’s mind every time he warned me not to take the Lord’s name in vain. His parents really stuck that fear of God into his head. The only relatable analogy I can rustle up is of the old, trodden gum that you see clotting city pavements.

(c) Mitchell Beanland, 2012.

My dog likes Shakespeare; My dog is the best dog in the world.He can stand on his hind legs and roll...

Wed, 14 Nov 2012 20:54:42 -0500

My dog likes Shakespeare;

My dog is the best dog in the world.
He can stand on his hind legs and roll over.
Today, I beckoned him to “come hither” and he came.
Even if it was just to lick at a coffee stain in the carpet.

(c) Mitchell Beanland, 2012.

Flat, flat, flat;2:00am: Productive creative writing.3:00am: Psychoanalytic deconstruction of...

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 11:09:32 -0500

Flat, flat, flat;

2:00am: Productive creative writing.
3:00am: Psychoanalytic deconstruction of self.

(c) Mitchell Beanland, 2012.

Under the great expanse of celestial sprawl:The bark of the beagle next door stirs me awake.An old...

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 10:40:00 -0500

Under the great expanse of celestial sprawl:

The bark of the beagle next door stirs me awake.
An old man splutters a tarry wheeze.
Ambulance sirens lull me back to sleep.

The Blues; Finger picked soul on cold verandah strings tuned to the sound of generations buried...

Mon, 12 Nov 2012 10:18:00 -0500

The Blues;

Finger picked soul on cold verandah strings tuned to the sound of generations buried under tobacco fields still in chains and with calloused hands. Dried like river beds. Feel the axes fall bluntly in time to chain gang prison songs. If you listen closely you can hear those chain’s shifting over the ankles of the lifetime innocent and barely guilty. When that coal fuelled voice starts bellowing fire, watch the gallow trees and the noose at the end of every honest man’s hopes swinging in the dry Mississippi breeze. Did you hear about old Legba rising from the plantation ground, or the hot foot powder of old hoodoo myth in lyric? The nostalgia of old photographs in the bent keepsake tins beneath the cold dirt crossroads and in old soulful strings in the dust, at dusk. Cold water flats for poets with hot hands in the whisky fuelled heat of tar and rubber and highway miles. Hitch hikers thumbing rides in deep november to run all blind into the arms of oppressors daughters and their pure, forbidden hearts. Jutting across the lam with lustful eyes for the winding tongues of roads. Pouring over the gravel, uninhibited, with resonators tied with rope fooling those army draftsmen that won over all your friends but you. Darned suits for closed caskets and the purple hearts of those same friends that marched in segregation for their countries and dragged the last wishes of their brothers back through the dead soil and torn bodies, along with their own death bed doubts. Hanging on by the threads of their bloodied sleeves and having to relive the gunshots in backfiring exhaust pipes ever since. Drink to the memory of those tired ones with heavy chests weighed down by medals of bravery and butchery. Welcome back with gangrenous arms the whole docile, god-fearing, chain-smoking nine to five yards. Now we just feel like bad men that once heard church bells toll for good men with good hearts and epiphanies and forlorn dreams piled up in notepads and folded letters in mass graves during wars played out before their parents were born. It’s enough to make your heart fall, like dirt onto pine boxes. Like folded flags on coffins.

(c) Mitchell Beanland, 2012.

Outside Suffolk Park fish and chip shop; I once pronounced the word “studious”...

Mon, 12 Nov 2012 08:30:00 -0500

Outside Suffolk Park fish and chip shop;

I once pronounced the word “studious” incorrectly in front of my Father.
He corrected me and suggested that I “best study harder.”