Becoming many-celled,
bright red to orange,
existing by thoughts alone,
barely living from the
sun, mountainous, even coniferous,
pink-tinged, with unlaced shoes,
uncombed hair, and handmade signs,
broke loose for the first time, making death
howl, between a porno shop and a truck stop
diner, they said Buffalo was 20 minutes
away and then it happened. Too young to age,
too old to unforgive, etched in the pigment
of undiscovered time, I was, in that car saved.
Like methane drizzling out of a wooden grave,
I was, for once, without temples and without judgment,
and I heard a voice hard as drying ivory, and as durable
as discarded torn pieces of rubber in a landfill
reminding me that it all fits perfectly together.
George Cassidy Payne is a poet from Rochester, NY. His work has been included in such publications as the Hazmat Review, Moria Poetry Journal, Chronogram Journal, Ampersand Literary Review, the Angle at St. John Fisher College, and 3:16 Journal. George’s blogs, essays and letters have appeared in the USA Today, Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, the Havana Times, the South China Morning Post, the Buffalo News, and more.
See all his poems on Tea House here.