Haunted Objects

Prose & Poetry By Scott Jensen

Haunted Objects
Prose & Poetry By Scott Jensen

All poems in this book are copy written to Scott Jensen 2009 Poison Heart Press

Cover design by: Scott Jensen (All images are in the public domain) Photo of author by Jonathan Ertzburger

To all of my friends that never doubted that I could do this, not even for a second. They are the ones who keep me going.

I've written some poetry I don't understand myself. -Carl Sandburg

Index
My Brain The fence Falling star Prelude to a record burning Clean needle, made in china Odyssey in cement From 6-9-09 at 1:08am A solitary dysfunctional death wish The hollow and the haunted (De) composition The Spinning Angelscrape Fission Every time I drink green tea I think of you A strange group of sisters Please, dont feed the metaphors Lonely girls Paper doll Miles from rest On crafting art Dwell A lock-jaw prayer Holding whist for a time 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

My brain
My brain is a dry sponge dying for a good drowning. My tongue tastes like pencil shavings and my fingertips smell like firecrackers in the summer air. I want to be inspired, more than anything else.

The Fence
"Do you think you can make it all the way over?" I asked you through the chain links in the fence. You told me you didn't know if you could make it, you must have seen me cut my arm on the barb wire. We stood there quiet in the winter air, the steam rose slowly from your nose when you exhaled a sigh of sadness. I made it this far and from this side I can't climb back. Standing here now in the cold air I look at you through the fence, you seem so far away.

Falling star
The sky held back the rain like a sneeze that never happened, we sat on the sidewalk trying not to huff the gasoline fumes. With fingers laced together, we counted the bricks on the run-down building across the parking lot. Be my lady forever and I promise to try and stay this clever as long as I possibly can. I hold my breath then bite my tongue and wait for the next shooting star.

Prelude to a record burning

Lying on your left side in the football field, you wake up. The sun had only beaten you to consciousness by a few minutes and the empty high school bleachers are blanketed in the light blue morning glow. When you sit up to put on your shoes it sets in that he left you to awaken alone with nothing but your tiara to accompany you. The dew covers your prom dress as you leave to find a pay phone so you can call a cab for a ride home. Regardless of being the newly appointed prom queen you woke up alone, and feeling alone never seemed so literal.

Clean needle, made in china

I really did think that you were pretty before the needle was dancing right there in your arm. It was hanging phallic in the inside of your elbow, I saw it wagging right after it blew its load into your hot red bloodstream. I thought you were pretty when you were sober. I dont think of you now, not anymore.

Odyssey in cement
Quiet skylines and gas station receipts. Silent bylines and parking-block breathers. Onward, over, away and gone. Caffeine prayers and deep breaths. Mix tapes and bright green wanderlust. Reasons to be hopeful.

From 6-9-09 at 1:08am

Walking home slow On a night like this My feet stay close Together stepping On the blank Space between the Double yellow lines Heel to toe And back again The repetition is my Slouching mantra My wish to carry me Back to where you Used to live when We would fall asleep Together with the TV on Heel to toe And back again I want to go Back again

A solitary dysfunctional death wish

A sour taste. A slow thump. The blue insides make sense again, crumpled up and wrinkled like newspaper. The train rode on its track characteristic. So what else can you ask the water but to choke the lung? Skin covered in dried sweat and concrete bits, the sidewalks are a terribly lonely place but at least they arent a quiet phone. So humor this hoarse throat and ink-stained fingertips because tonight, my dear, the drift was caught. Its not any different because its not mutual. Here again the insides became overcoats, and blue, how ironic. The violence of feeling dictates its laws, love is like a shotgun, leveling all in its spread. Open armed and in its path is this manshaped target stands, time and time again, begging for a change of fate. Wouldn't you know? Im damn immortal.

The hollow and the haunted

The damage was done with a slow twisting the sight of her smiling through the hushed soliloquy of the sick Saturday night when she sucked him off. Passed the past its easy to fake the replaying of the dashboard light gilding across her sex -sweat covered and gentle features as something less haunting when his name is mentioned. These apparitions will never find their way home, The ghosts will always be earthbound. So I offer them a seat and open a beer, It looks like Im going to be the one who needs changing.

(De) composition
A soft kiss on your lips and the bliss of his touch. Im frozen stiff under the pine tree with needles poking into the pale skin of my back while the gentle touch of the corpse flies crawling in my nostrils keep me conscious.

Ashes to ashes, my bones back into the earth and my soul back to the dirt that God scraped from underneath his fingernails. Dancing on the border of infidelity you smile genuinely, his skin is so warm and mine isnt even cold yet.

10

The Spinning
The wiring in my ceiling fan is screwed up. Most of the time it doesn't work right. In the summer I turn a box fan on and point it up. If it's tilted just right the breeze it blows will spin the blades of the ceiling fan. When that happens it looks completely normal, Like there's nothing wrong with the wiring and everything is fine. You are my box fan.

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Angelscrape
The sky rips in half and the earth screams her name. My skin shivers as I taste the poison on the back of her teeth. She gasps between stabs to hear the grinding of my spine, bone on bone. The purity of death and the ecstasy of grief is what she sheds with every passing embrace. I hold my breath for fear of smelling her on me, because if I do this may all be real.

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Fission
Have you ever wondered what your soul looks like? Or anyone's for that matter? Is it orange and yellow, a burning color like something exploding? Is it shaped like an outward expanding mushroom cloud? Like the sun we built on the ground in Hiroshima? Does it obliterate every damn thing in its path and turn everything alive into a gray dust? Does your soul act different from everyone else's? Or does it flicker and spit like the single hanging light bulb swinging from the ceiling on its extension cord noose? I guess, in the end, it really doesn't matter what it looks like. Only how it lives and if it chooses to lay down and sleep.

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Every time I drink green tea I think of you

I remember your voice and the nights we would stay up writing verse after verse. I remember your skin, switchblade hipbones and your sly & sleek smile. I remember your eyes and how I could never put a clear description on them. I remember how easy your name is to say, I hope that eventually, I'll say it again.

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A strange group of sisters

They were all born with the same color hair, like a litter of cats. It bothered me, to say the least. They would all laugh in this high-pitched tone and circle around, much like I would imagine velociraptors hunting. They were one weird group, just to make an understatement. One weird group. To say the least.

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Please, dont feed the metaphors

Should I take your coat? Welcome in. Make yourself at home, just like all the metaphors. You know, the silly things we say, like; Two birds with one stone. Or Grab the bull by the horns. Or Like a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs and a ton of other sayings we cant remember the origins of or at least where we heard them to start with anyway. Whether or not they have animals in them, we love our metaphors just the same. So, can I take your hat too? It really does match your shoes and coat quite nicely. What is it made of? Leather? I hope not, you may offend the metaphors.

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Lonely girls
Thick winter coats cover up the lonely girls. They wear the colors dark yellow and brown mixed with deep greens and sometimes a rich purple. They button their fronts all the way up. They shiver and shake, they fool like its February in the first weeks of fall and they shudder with scarves tossed over one shoulder. You see, the lonely girls wear the thick winter coats to cover up the bodies they dont much care for. They dress up in this years fashion, only the latest, only the warmest. Even if it isnt cold.

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Paper doll
Are you always going to stay the way you are now? Standing on the line and being another guy's paper doll. I'm not offering to pound the sidewalk by your side; this isn't me trying to lace fingers or migrate into your warm and fuzzy heart-parts. This is me saying that you are way passed one dimensional, no sheet of shaped and decorated paper could ever hold you. You are still heroic in black and white photos but your real life wonderinducing splendor is laid inside you, passed poetry and 11:11 wishes. No one can ever find words, not him and defiantly not me. But still, I don't mind the view. Not at all.

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Miles from rest

I took a walk with Dee Dee Ramone and John Berryman down to the harbor across from the Jersey shore. It was the middle of the night. I dreamed the long & short of it days ago. They both did their best to teach me about patients. They suggested I wait for her. I held an unopened pack of cigarettes in my hand the whole way. That life was always there to go back to. The Whiskey & tar-battered lungs are always a half a step away. If need be. Dead men or not they knew more about life than the people around in the daylight. I quoted Robert Frost in an attempt to seem somber. I explained how I was feeling the nights get longer, how life didnt feel so full when her voice is a phone line away. I didnt know I was figuratively dead until her blue eyes woke me up. Dee Dee laughed when John joked about how figuratively dead was better than being dead all together. I decided to laugh along; I enjoy that type of black humor as well. I spent the rest of the night listening to their stories as we staggered on down the waterline, until day broke and I woke up better than the night before.

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On crafting art
Smile through insecurity, Tumbleweed. Fumble towards greatness with a smirk and bits of thunder stuck between your teeth. Make it matter, make it shiver and most importantly burn it at both ends.

20

Dwell
Inverted I swim, deeper and farther away. The ocean whispers in a symphonic voice and I feel I have found a quiet place here. I taste the cold salt water on my lips and feel the frigid rush blanket my scared skin. I embrace this new journey with open eyes. Three hundred fathoms dropped I find the counterstatement that nature proposed to our constant cries and omnipotent questing. I call out to the expanse that embraces me, and find its arms already firmly around me. Here, below the surface, I am finally home.

21

A lock-jaw prayer
Do you remember the rain falling all the way down from the sky and slithering across our scalps? Do you remember "waking up under that street light like "waking up" was something we had just figured out? I know I'm not a great poet but I'm a good man who has been seeing his way to wishing pop up like daisies hes not ready to push. I love you and I want to lock us up someplace quiet. Away from dry skies and hot daylight. Someplace distant where we can duct-tape our hearts in cigar boxes and give statistics the finger because who the hell cares? We got these scalps that love the slither of rain drops, we got these hands that need holding and these eyes that need waking up" like "waking up" is brand new and ripe in the wrapper and I got these eyes that are dead set on waking up only inches from yours because, baby, I'm not ready for the daisies yet and I'm just praying, in a lock-jawed rabies-type way for the street light and waiting for the sky to fill.

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Holding whist for a time

Sometimes I figure that I've got these punch-drunk angels pushing my fist into some kind of automatic writing. I can reach out as far as I can, west to east and have no real part in any of this. If loose lips really do sinks ships than I'll have to leave this ocean bottom as clean as a newborn baby's airtight soul. I don't get to iron out the kinks or fill in the blanks with my own adverbs I don't get to untangle the labyrinths worth knots these outward imposed daily riddles spin my insides into. I make the touch but never a personal one. It's not about me, it never is. I make the blank pieces out there fit, keep the objects haunted, keep the ghost in the machine and keep the machine moving. It's not about me, but maybe one day I'll use this fist for something else.

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Scott Jensen has been writing short fiction, poetry and prose for himself and those around him for the past decade and a half. He lives in a small town named Anderson in north western South Carolina and works retail jobs to pay the rent. He likes his life as well as his art and he hopes that you do too. This is his first book.

To contact Scott e-mail: serikjensen@gmail.com If you want to read more of his writing please visit: Scottjensenspokenword.bandcamp.com

 2009 Poison Heart Press