JON CARTER - POEMS

Jon Carter is a writer from Austin Texas, and a psychology major/ senior at Huston Tillotson University. He has published poetry and short stories in a number of magazines, and his first novel is in progress.

war drums 
​

​something somewhere is
beating the war drum
and I’m afraid of
what it might be. 
 
I’m sitting down in the grass eating leaves
Falling from an elm tree hanging
above me, green juices are running from my mouth
and tears are racing down my cheeks 
 
there are glass-smashing echoes
winding thru my head. 
 
something somewhere is 
beating the war drum
and I’m afraid 
of what it might be. 
 
the sky is clear the birds are
too loud, singing singing singing,
and each of my feet is like a sack of
pebbles, directionless.
 
carved to pieces 
by starvation 
no love
too much love,
rejections countless,
sweat-drenched efforts thrown into the 
wicked flames of the fire in me.  
 
something is always reaching around my head,
poking around.
 
something somewhere is 
beating the war drum 
and I am always
AFRAID.
 

 
the trees make faces at me when I’m sad
​

​the trees make faces at me
when I’m sad. 
 
they bare their teeth and 
laugh with their eyes-
snarling faces of sadistic
satisfaction 
silhouetted and pressed hard against
the sun setting behind them. 
 
the sky 
orange to
yellow to 
baby-blue to 
black. 
 
even harrowed by despair
they can’t 
rob me of my magick I can 
escape 
 
sitting on the porch
on top of the world 
that’s rocking back and forth 
around me. 
 
back and forth
guns drawn...
it’s got to be one
or the other.
 
it’s always been a matter of me
versus the world.
 
to the world I say you needn’t be
so unforgiving,
you don’t ALWAYS have to take our love to the 
slaughterhouse,
 
look at everything that has died there.
 
it is possible, world, to let me
win just once.
 

september heat 
​

​I remember walking 
 
down the middle of a deserted street
the skies were crimson
the houses were gold and glittering-
the sun, 
a smoldering
falling comet,
cut itself into the shadowed horizon just beyond the suburbs. 
 
I remembered how 
those bones gave away,
collapsing under
the weight of the brick.
 
I remembered those shots ringing out
glass breaking
a child crying
a single dog letting out a single bark
while I ducked and ran around the corner.
 
around the corner while
 
shots of red and yellow light
went driving thru the
whirlwind of red and yellow leaves being pushed around
the street in the september heat 
 
something reached down into my gut and 
held me there,
choking me out crowding 
my chest and feet. 
 
I couldn’t breathe.
 
I remembered they used to drop bombs on 
shouting elephants 
exploding them into random 
blood-soaked terror-
 
fueled pieces in the jungle. 
That was Vietnam.
 
they drop bombs on the people now, too.
But people cared more about the elephants.
 
I remember stumbling forward 
with my cigarette going out in 
my dry mouth the sweat
running down me until I was slick enough to 
 
pass through the eye of a needle, I was well on my way to heaven.  
 
there were 2 more shots ringing out and the sound of tires ripping up the pavement,
a high-screaming engine like the warcry of a falcon
tore away into some next dimension.  
 
I remembered that no one ever gets far when
the sky is burning purple and pink
the way it was then. 
 
/ I remembered that natural guts are like 
Gila Monsters crawling thru
the desert with nothing
but themselves / that I only have myself too.
 
and this goddamn desert.
 
I remembered being eaten away by the red hot
september heat
and I lit a cigarette
and stared out the window,
 
waiting.