Jake Goetz


from Walking a beach near Aberdeen

                for Kurt

I

the morning is a beach
and the tide rolls in like indecision
to build a castle of sand and pretend
or dig a simple hole and let
that great expanse of overcast blue
saturate emotion – something a 6 pack of Coopers
might enable escape from
or imagining that shotgun to your head
as a distorted F chord can be bent
to the sound of the world leaving your skull
like a paint brush flicked against a wall
that last dash of immense colour
and at times when i too have thought such
some primitive arrogant hand abrupts
and i’m left dumb-founded in a soft-bewilderment
not for or against anything
just ‘walking a beach near Aberdeen’
which i sing to myself in the falling rain
and feel the whole pile of insurmountable bullshit
in my veins, this circus that’s been erected burn up
and whither in the breakers
then forgetting – almost the same as leaving

II

weatherboard houses and pines
lead down to the muddy banks of the Wishkah
hundreds of wooden poles
protruding its western flow
and ripples

               Warning do not anchor or dredge gas

below the bridge i think of this town
dredging your youth, anchoring you to a future
like the thumping tires above
anchoring us to a choking atmosphere
like all meaning returning to loss
in the reversing of the big bang theory

a young kid wearing a side-ways cap
sits getting ripped, a ‘hey man’
and jumping on his bike leaves me
to a can of salmon, coffee, corkscrew
dry roasted sea-weed snacks
two pairs of scissors, floral coat-hanger, the graffiti …

Kurdt, come back, as you were                9/10/14
as you were, as I want you to be …..
and kill Justin Bieber
                               Mike R. – Philly

                                              vandalism as beautiful
                                              as a rock
                                              in a cops face

                Kurts room
                smells like
                teen spirit

                                                             Dear Kurt,
                                                             I miss you
                                                             I just wanted to let you know
                                                             I wish that I could still see you play shows
                                                             I wish that you were still alive
                                                             so I could just say hi
                                                             and tell you thank you for
                                                             starting a music revolution …

two geese bicker, one flapping its wings

the rippling

                Thanks for giving
                What everyone can give –
                If only they gave
                A shit

yet

                i don’t know what i meant by that




Electric birds over Tucumán

above the Quilmes umbrellas
they bounce like wi-fi between palms
lighting the night with conversation
as we sit drinking wine to chance
to travel, the same way an old man
opens a newspaper in a small café
and is content with having lived
in that Argentinean sense
of passion and persuasion
as later we share ourselves
at the window of a similar cafe
watching cleaners hose down a footpath
and young niños and niñas leaving taxis
drunk or drugged for a night of clubbing
for a night, this night of wandering –
of language – a book written by pure existing
just as these birds over Tucumán
who know every meaning is the meaning
and nada mas, and just as the plastic
that fills this countries landscape
is unable to decay
i think of us blowing through ways
to not again know night’s unknown isolations
to switch off the lights when you enter the room
to feel your skin, curvature, soft against me
to learn again



Jake Goetz is a writer from Sydney, Australia. His poetry has most recently appeared in Writ Review and Mascara Literary Review. He is currently travelling about South America.
 
 
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