Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Poetry by William Taylor Jr.

Portrait of a Woman

She had
skin like leather
the cruelest mouth
I’d ever seen
and eyes as hard
as the streets
on which she walked
everything she owned
in a plastic crate
beneath her arm
an ancient radio
screaming jazz
as she walked down Eddy St.
on a Sunday
afternoon
her clothes
ragged and
ill fitting
but her legs
still as beautiful
as any
that ever were
and those eyes
meeting mine
daring me
to say so.



And No One Left to Remember

These days my wife
is troubled
by the slow and ongoing
death of our earth

and all the reasons for it

and how the president
and nobody else
much cares.

It keeps her from sleep.

She does not believe in god
but sometimes wishes
that she did.

The thought of every beautiful thing
gone

and no one left
to remember.

She asks me why we should be bothered
to do anything
at all

and I don’t have much of an answer

except that I imagine there must be some kind of beauty
here
in these tiny moments

the fact that they exist at all
is maybe reason enough.

I think about it and I
don’t think about it.

I’ve never known what to do about anything.

I think tomorrow I will start
drinking early.



Your Eyes Like The Sun

I have no god but
a decent bloody mary
on an otherwise
empty afternoon
does its part
to calm the troubled soul

and I imagine
others too
must weary
of trying to hold the world together

on a day
when you can’t get
too numb
too fast

on a day
when all the murders
and suicides
make perfect sense

when the surface of things
peels away in flakes
and the void shines through

burning your eyes
like the sun

like the flashlight
of a motherfucking cop
when you know you are

guilty.

William Taylor Jr. was born in Bakersfield, California and currently lives in San Francisco with his wife and a cat named Trouble. His poetry and stories have appeared widely in the small press and on the internet. He is the author of numerous chapbooks and his work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His latest book is So Much Is Burning published by sunnyoutside Press. A book of his collected poems is forthcoming from Centennial Press. He will one day be the last man in America not to own a cell phone.



3 comments:

Anonymous said...

'Portrait of a Woman' is lovely.

Anonymous said...

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