Selected Poems 1-Sebastian Nail

The Dirt On My Hands

The dirt on my hands are tiny hooks that carry me upwards 

But I’m looking down at the soil and the Earth looks back

What do you see? I sigh. Nothing yet but sweat and flesh

Made warm by survival, or maybe just the hurt pride that makes a man

Different from a dog and the same as a nail driven down with to its blunt top 

With the edge underneath, agonizing for recognition and dreaming of when it didn’t 

need it to breathe. Dreaming it didn’t grow up to be a small part of a chair

The dirt on my hands hurts my young skin, makes it dirty like coal but never

Shiny like diamonds which are so pretty but so numb from the pressure 

I can feel the tiny hooks, but I cannot see them carrying me upwards

The sun is very hot and the Earth looks closer everyday

In The Mouth A Desert

Ten million times I have kissed aluminum and sobbed like a dog whose master is dead 

Spit nails from my mouth, my teeth are shadows that anguish and click 

I am sand dune, blown by the wind in a city where they kill cats

The heart like a lion, dipped in a river of blood 

In the mouth a desert, Sunday morning communion on the couch 

Drank November on the rocks, it was nice to have ice for a change, 

Spent Tuesday morning on my knees in the bathroom again

When I opened Pandora’s Box they took my keys and took my car 

Took my wife and my heart, all because I opened a little glowing glass jar

Painted her on my ceiling so when I have the spins she will dance for me again

I gave her a little seashell so she could hear the ocean roar 

Like rage it roars at me and I crawl to the beach to take the salt from the sea

IS

She’s crying in my front seat, January rain hammering my sunroof-

It was only one time and I was drunk come pouring out her mouth for the third time-I can count

I’m sorry-So what. In April I reach for her hand, her blank stare falling like fingers in sand

 February and I’m screaming. Don’t come back. Don’t come back. Don’t you ever. Come back

In March my car slams into a tree and as they pull me out I see you smile then walk away

Maybe not. Nice Dream after some Nice Grey Goose. So many Grey Geese in my room

Fluttering in glass. It’s blue outside. I’m blue like my painting, bluer than you were 

It’s December, before It was only one time and we’re walking downtown, counting blue cars

In October I dress like Death to impress you and you text me I hope nothing happens to u

I left my EKG stickers on your bedroom floor and all over your paintings 

The one of your dog with the charcoal pencil and our songbook

And a butterfly clasp in a bed of broken glass and ribbons

Three years later I’ve lost track of days staring at my dirty walls, staring at my dirty floor

Staring into space and time, a slideshow with a Grey Goose watermark-I am nowhere

Guitar strings line my bed, cut me in my sleep…am/was/is a drunk pouring pain on paper

September we lie in bed and I hear the garbage trucks beeping outside the window

We sing Hey Jude and make out…..Do you want to go to sleep

Then she rolled over and went to sleep and I sat up listening to the birds sing Mozart