Four Poems by Kevin M. Hibshman

 

Corrosion

 

Garbage stinking

Alley

Slender side street

No way we could meet

here

Methane

Bottles clinking

Broken glass

Broken English

Cigar smoke wafting

Bar patrons laughing

Cheap jewelry glinting like

gold teeth

Sun setting on the faded dreams

of many

Tin-plated

Transistor jazz mingling with

gas fumes and bad cooking

Thump thump of hip hop convertibles

Oozing

Boggy swamp

City slime inching up through

the grates

Slow hum of tired machines

Stray cat calls finding my window open

Afraid to sleep

A feeling like corrosion

 

Hours

 

Hardening as time thickens like wax

after the flame extinguishes itself

The blame has been fixed and fate binds me

in its headlock

I, once desire's pawn, am thirsty for a nectar

so sweet and strange

I wait

Will you call for me like thunder rolling

off a canyon?

How I long to be alarmed by those tremors

Come shake the dust from my bones

Save me now from these bloodless hours as I lie alone,

dying in a dream

 

The Balcony

 

Sweep of wind

Ghost brushing by

Pricks my skin with an icy memory

Why do I stand here, targeted for attack?

 

The Dust In Here

 

Never clears

Lick of the lisping moon drags a tongue

through my room

Shadows pale in silent resolution

I was a tight rope walker until I

lost my nerve

The wire broke and there was no net

 

Drunk and in love with danger

Words pour into open wounds

Come twilight my head spins around

My eye at the key hole but no sign, no sound

It was always falling that I feared

No one knows I am sad but still alive and my cries all die

before they can reach an ear

 

Kevin M. Hibshman has had his poetry, prose, reviews and collages published around the world, most recently in Punk Noir Magazine, Rye Whiskey Review, Piker Press, The Crossroads, Drinkers Only, 1870, Synchronized Chaos, Yellow Mama, Unlikely Stories Mark V, Literary Yard, Lothlorien Poetry Journal and Medusa's Kitchen.