The heart slaps along

A short poem.

by Marcus Jonathan Chapman

The heart slaps along
sticking
to hot asphalt
with each rotation

pulling from gravel and tar
with each bounce

spurting ruby and blue
leaving rust in its dust

green shards from broken Mickey’s
orphaned bougainvillea
plastic straws
French fries
bottle caps
abandoned black rubber
cigarette filters
chewed gum
yesterday’s papers
sand
and
dust
stick to it

The heart slaps in a puddle
swelling
with oil, rain and gasoline
stopped

Send it back
spinning and rolling

Pulling from the road
with each bounce

send it
slapping along
wrapped
in flowers and glass

You know

A short poem.

by Marcus Jonathan Chapman

When that orange burns through the gaps in the leaves
and you pull your sweater just a little tighter
and the rush hour of thoughts put you in a daze
and your faced with another night sleeping alone
and the dogs are whining for their walk
and you’ve mindlessly opened and closed the fridge
and you glance at the clock 90 times in one minute
and you turn the dryer back on without even checking
you know
you know you’re alone
but that little blue ball
Bukowski’s little blue bird
still hops
in your rib cage
keeps you pacing
you know your spirit
can take it
you know

A lunch from a long time ago

A short piece written in 2011 or 2012

by Marcus Jonathan Chapman

My aunt pregnant for the first time loses her baby. I am sad but I am too young to understand the impact a tragedy of that magnitude has on the person closest to it.
My aunt is a strong woman, full of love, confidence and wit. Perhaps a judgmental, albeit human, eye with a warm hug regardless of how she see’s you.
I make a habit of pushing myself into the spotlight of my mind but cuing the music to cut myself off early on the stage of life. My thoughts consume my relation to everything and everyone. I have learned that I need not waste time on people now if I will see them in heaven. What am I saying, there is no heaven. Childhood teachings are really sticky.
My narcissism is making me sick but I can’t stop thinking about me. The earth revolves around the sun, not the son of Christofer and Ester Chapman.
…
A lunch with my Aunt in which I cannot clearly remember if I was intoxicated or not. I remember itching for a cigarette as soon as I wolfed down the turkey salad on rye. I remember shaking my head and repeating “I’m fine, no, I’m fine. I’m okay. I’m okay.” The first lie we tell ourselves to convince the mirror that it will never shatter. My aunt relayed an observation about my 5-year-old self that has lingered and wriggled around in the back of my mind like a severed lizards tail.

Something changed when I was 5 years old. I can’t remember my childhood. It is as fuzzy as a booze fueled night on the town (or in my apartment). What happened to me? My heart races. Perhaps, this will be the tragic excuse of molestation. A victim of pedophilia turned poet. A writer who has been in the gutter and can paint it in a perfect-bound, hard cover copy of his first novel. How can I use this for immortality? I want to live forever. That narcissism can’t pull its gaze from the reflection.

My aunt lost a baby, maybe even two and I’m left wondering if I’ve ever been touched inappropriately or left in a toxic environment. Where do I get off feeling sorry for myself? Nothing has ever happened to me that I cannot handle. And there it is again that me word. Its all about me. Not you or him or her or them or it. Its all about me and yet I put myself in the lowest category of the last file in the dustiest, rustiest cabinet of life and all humanity but I insist to myself that everything is about me. Every hug, kiss, smile, squeeze, laugh, smirk, giggle, round of applause, slap on the back, is all about me. I am narcissistic and I don’t even think very highly of myself. Am I truly this selfish or do I indulge for the namesake of these pages? Both are scary prospects for an obsession that runs circles around my attention to anything else.

I have an excuse but you are simply stupid. I made a mistake but you have ruined my life. I forgot but you are careless. I am sick but you are lazy. I was wronged but you don’t stand up for yourself. I had a bad day but you have a bad attitude. I may gossip but you should get a life. I am frustrated but you simply don’t know what to do. I am not perfect but you think you’re better than me. I have an excuse but you are just stupid.

What is really going on here? The words follow the emotion, which rushes in after an experience. I feel less like a swan and more like a parrot. Obsessed with my own image and copying the noises closest to me. To be clawing through the same self absorbed drivel, session after writing session is enough to make me want to rip out my own heart and feed it to my brain just to get a taste of pure emotion. I am supposed to write for myself not about myself. This constant cycle of narcissistic thought is welling up in my chest I want to scratch out every letter “I”, “m”, “e” and hyper drive into some god like perspective. An uninvolved point of view. Place myself on the objective alter and slit my throat letting the Deus ex Machina of my psyche take over. To sever and shatter the ego from the self. Who am I supposed to be? Don’t follow me. We’re getting back into those dark slimy corners of the mind again. So deep down that I must slowly return like a deep sea diver coming up for air. Too fast and the chaos never leaves. Attempting never to dwell in the past I move ever forward so fast that the hair is being ripped off the front of my head and sticking to my back. Time whips past me and the closest I’ve ever come to the truth is a question. Does anyone get this right?

Underwear, Hide, Noisy

The morning arrived in a gradient of orange, purple and blue across the sky. The sun hadn’t pulled itself over the mountains and the moon was enjoying a glimpse of the day. The girl with the pearls in her eyes wept.

She wanted to hide from the noisy events playing in her mind. The potions from the previous night had not completely worn off and, more troubling, she couldn’t find her underwear. Buried, she feared, under the snoring ogres sprawled over the couches, chairs, tables and floor.

A thing of beauty she had wanted to glimpse. Not a thing, a feeling. Grabbing her knees, she forced her thoughts into the present. What’s next? No, that was the future. Where am I? She turned to look through a window but couldn’t recognize any of the fixtures through the glass. Her glassy eyes took in the room in front of her. The sleeping creatures around her were familiar in her flashes of memory from the night previous.

Where is my underwear? A chill shook through her as her questions probed deeper. Why aren’t I wearing them?

One of the ogres stirred, opening its eyes for just a moment and locking its gaze with hers before passing back into unconsciousness.

Could he know what had happened? Her mind fixated. She had a feeling. That question, and any answer or lingering doubt, would haunt her, either way. Where is my underwear?

She was realizing that something inside her would become stuck, no matter if she left this place or not. Her consciousness screamed at its daydreaming brother for details, but she was answered only with a feeling. More likely, a mixture of emotions that stirred in her a macabre feeling.

Anxiety, depression, sadness and darkness, if that could be called an emotion. It felt like more feelings were to blame but she had to force herself to become unstuck from that place. Her underwear was missing, she would not be. The front entrance was only a few feet in front of her, though sleeping giants lay in between.

She forced open the window and climbed out. Her skin tightening from the cold of the morning and the pearls in her eyes shining even though the sun was still hiding behind the mountains.