Poetry by Adrian Potter
Everybody Sings the Blues, Sometimes
Spinning, we shut our sleep-deprived eyes
and recite prayers until evil is no longer
subletting space inside our thoughts.
Permafrost hearts thaw, melt like ice
cubes doused with hooch, while ambition
drowns in our lukewarm excuses. Hope is
a bullet lodged in our chests. It makes us
bleed out until sanity fades and dreams
collect dust like B-sides in a jukebox.
We repeat mistakes ad nauseam until
we collapse. Bodies grow numb to our
bruised histories; our eyes tell stories
no one cares to read. How sadness
burrows in our bones, dissolves
into the marrow. Remember youth,
the bliss of foolishness, the ghosts
of promises once spoken haunting
our ears. Struggle fills a man’s heart
yet leaves his soul empty as the
compliments he craves. We’re suckers,
trusting the propaganda factory
in our minds. The burden of a tentative
future is discovering how wrong we were
about the past. Here we are, piss drunk
off our collective asses, life mixing
its usual cocktail of sadness and dazzle,
first one’s on the house. Maturity
is the hangover we’re left to nurse
after another irresponsible night,
so many shots poured, motivation
sinking slowly to the bottom of each
glass. Listen to my anxious music.
The overcast skies in my lyrics assume
you are familiar with pain but that you,
like me, are simply trying to endure.
Everybody sings the blues, sometimes.
Human detritus, wasting years tearing
ourselves apart to fit into narratives
we didn’t even write. Reckless text
messages from some slurred hour
too late or too early to actually call.
Our mouths are answered prayers
for someone else’s pleas, our fingers
so eager to please that their touch
feels like melted sin, heaven-sent.
Isn’t it ironic how we confuse pretending
for persevering, grow comfortable as we
become contradictions? Ill-shaped hearts
beat within our chests, bloody & engorged,
versed in a darkness so deep only the moon
understands. Sadly, we know each other
only in pieces, but enough to recognize
some are missing, and the rest are taped
together, and even that tape is failing,
losing its grip, allowing pieces to fall
methodically, one by one. Our lives,
littered as they might be, are ready
to be picked up, floating in the narrow
space between optimism and despair.
Stumble awkwardly towards deliverance.
Our redemption is half-spilled like
the drinks we toast to the blank pages
of our unfinished biographies. Cheers.
Why I Drop Bombs aka Write Poems
to feel bewildered by the splintered sky
so I can create waves in a low tide
my melanin challenges all attempts to assimilate
because vulnerability can be sexy
to offer psalms of disappointment
amazing things are happening here in hell
legally I’ve been advised to say nothing
I don’t know how to smile
I smile too much
I sometimes adhere to stereotypes in secret
society is always trying to kill my kind
I know how to be both bully and victim
I want you to understand the origin of frustration
the topography of my soul is treacherous
there’s not enough space for unanswered prayers
the topography of my soul is inviting
there’s bourbon on my breath
so I won’t hold onto nostalgia like a pocketknife
a desire to remain connected in a detached society
to pierce the bulletproof glass surrounding my heart
a noose chokes out all my unhinged lyrics
I sing in the morning like I want to forget the night
Pandemic Postcard
You wonder how to center yourself in an off-balanced world,
how to watch everything fall apart but feign like it’s still intact.
I could ask the same: how can our world take social and distancing,
thrusting those words together clumsily like they’re on a blind date,
making them glance off each other, two billiard balls that touch
briefly before heading off in different directions? Or watch idly
as gaslighting torches our collective sanity, charlatan leaders
on social media claiming there’s nothing to see here, despite
our vision catching more fires than we care to witness: contagion,
fractured economies, futile attempts to scrub away a nation’s
indelible stain of bigotry. In the year of the disease, we had nothing
more to lose until we completely lost it. One thing after another,
gone, feeling connected only to our devices and desperation,
all smiles emptied or hidden behind masks. As society’s seams
unravel, we lose more than just our time and patience. Do you see
what just happened, how I started off tiptoeing through minefields
of uncertainty towards a flattened curve and wound up starting
riots within my soul, igniting the fuse of my incendiary heart?
Social distancing: perhaps it doesn’t separate us after all.
Maybe it brings us closer, in theory, collectively fighting
the urge to give in to touch, forcing us to forsake our plans,
having learned long ago to want only what we cannot have.
