“You’re right!”
-Chester Arthur Kent

This is how you live your life
and why we will have to separate ours.

This is thought to be
caustic/ not because of
its cost/ but because a hole remains/
like a cigarette burn through thin
material.

And such is immaterial to you./
Even though you own every word
said to you/ of you/ the sound is not
merely enough unless it is your voice.

(Though  often I find you gurgling words
surely Narcissus did into the lake.)

Yet, no one has come up with a way
to quote you/ against yourself/which
you don’t find flattering/Thus,
in every debate you enter/ you find
yourself with the last word and “Victory.”

This is how you live your life and
how  we separate our ways.

5-1-09 (Revised 9-15-09)

I say—
What if we risked great leaps of
faith/canyons of logic
suicidal commitments
and aggressive loneliness…

Because we are ups and downs
in a long journey seemingly
going nowhere;
Been waiting at a yellow light patiently—
I’m not in a hurry to hurt.

The vows we made to each other
have been forged as all good rings
of pure (golden) truth;
Our diamonds earned by conflict.

Yet secrets—
Yours/ My fingers tired from waiting
Then tv dinners/ One player
video games/ Happy hours
by myself.

We dinner/we sleep together
And inside each other;
But take separate cars
even though we are headed to
the same place.

9.09.08

[Chester Kent]

I’m pretty certain that the creation of sound and the words that lie on the page are pretty close. But yeah, just click on the player below.

[Primum Non Nocere

-Latin for "First Do No Harm"]

Hush, listen beyond the fireworks of America’s victory over Iraq. I am Medicaid cut short at the knees, 8 years on welfare and the turn around is…well unfair. $6.50 an hour and I have no time to myself. California dreaming of a better life elsewhere but after the deserts I only find pedeophiles who advance to molest my inner child. I am en Purgatorio; mi mano e mi crus bounded. I can not touch my fingertips.

Applaud US at our conventions. I am economic turn around, if you turn around.

If you don’t know God,
then you’re probably better off

Because re-entertaining the fact
(that) only have I known a
punishing God;
On my
knees so long the pews
have become splinters/
I bleed, I wane—

I exist inside
and outside my & self/
Learning about my & self.

My ‘Double Consciousness’
grower closer together/
My thoughts accompanying
some organs as oft-repeated
chants—

Anticipating a miracle
to explain the Genius of Life
or something that passes for it/
I beg. I pray—
“Lord, help me find a way
out this maze“—

Left here in the wake of fears
and hungry, then consuming fires/
I search stained windows
and chalices of wines
for composure;
Then a spiritual finger traces across
my lips—
“Keep waiting. Know he is coming.”

But how long do I wait?
Should I keep fasting and holding
steady/these hands shaped
as a bowl to be fed
with my soul?

Or do I close my eyes/
clasp my nervous hands together
and call this impatience
“Belief.”