Good Old Pain and other poems by Wes Civliz | #thesideshow

GOOD OLD PAIN

Who knew I’d yearn for my old pain

I’m jealous
of my previous self
and its respectable woe

Me no likey my new uncool throbbing

The old pain was art; the new pain is work

WORK CURES EVERY ILL

I must find the spiced, honeyed paradise in unending work

But yikes oh wow am I ever lazy

I want only to sink into a nap’s quicksand

Let my eyelids kneel to my nose

Oh may my face lock closed

Oh do I ever envy the comatose

PARALLEL PROCESSING

I’m saying a poem aloud from memory

The words burble out in sound bubbles while

my hands wash coffee cups in the soapy sink while

I think up a movie (girl’s extreme beauty goads her to suicide)

Meanwhile heartbeat, breathing, digestion, immune, etc.

Brains do all this at once?

YOU BASTARD

You big, bony, bushy-bearded

bastard

Women’s hips and smiles
swivel and tilt
around you
all day

*

The sun melts
into the inky valleys
between the ocean’s
sherbet-orange waves

Women are sunsets

You are the night

Wes Civilz lives next to a dusty cactus in Tucson, Arizona. Some past and forthcoming publications can/will be found in The Antioch Review, PANK, Entropy Magazine, and The Green Mountains Review. Say hello at wescivilz.com.