Poetry | Fred Aiken Writing

October 19, 2023

to tug; but not that way

there’s a line i keep following,
though it’s not a line that i’m aware of,
nor is it particularly deterministic,
nor random,
but a loose thread being tugged at,
violently, and without remorse,
until the line and everything following it,
aka me,
is disastrously splayed out in the middle of the kitchen
in a crime scene that no one is responsible for,
because no one else
saw what happened,
and that’s the story they’re sticking to

October 17, 2023

pretending to write non-existence

i keep writing lines
to one poem after another,
and they sound
okay
in my head, at first,

but then when i read them out loud,
and i’m presented with their existence,
which could be for two minutes,
or two million years (though unlikely),

i rapidly delete them
and then pretend i never knew they existed,
and in a way they don’t

October 16, 2023

swaying in the midnight

i keep scrolling through
an endless webpage of information
that i don’t need to consume,
but do need to consume,
or i don’t know if i should consume or not,
but it’s there, and i’m here, so…
might as well, i suppose,
and my eyes pop out of their socket,
blood-shot, tired, unable to comprehend
why my mind can’t shut itself off,
reboot and restart,
i have no fuel left,
and i’m confusing profundity for consumption,
as i sway into the midnight bliss
that wars against itself until there’s nothing left
but the barren wasteland of a mind cannibalizing
its own thoughts and putting them on display
for all, or none, to gawk and point,
maybe even laugh