JOSEPH ZARNOWSKI - POEMS

Joseph Zarnowski lives in Chicago, Illinois.  He studied creative writing at Southern Illinois University.  He has since worked an endless array of odd jobs, tramping through the years like a pantomiming tourist.  His only discernable will being poetry.  He has recently published his debut collection, Sugar Soaked Days.  

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DRESDEN NIGHTS
​

​Those pill-induced nights on Dresden stories
the K holes we sunk into playing games
with the dead
the kowtow abasement of our thoughts
as we depressed lower and lower into the cotton
unstuck in time
lonely traveling the great milky racket
 
into the stars as the bedroom grew smaller
beneath us
and the towns smeared into the landscape
pilgrim astronauts in transit
two lovers in the strange curling magic
wicked crafts for the undead in death
do us all a part in freeing up for a weekend
 
motherless antibodies feeding on lakewater
catfish bottom feeders lapping it up green
rude and half learned
 
do me a favor and keep us lost there
in the amorphous mass of quivering lines
never let us comeback
we spent an eternity on a saltine cracker
afterall.
 

GREAT GRAY ELEPHANTS 
​

​As I ascended past earth’s atmospheric veil
the jelly mirage that drapes our entire being
I saw the blue-black cornea that overlays
the redbrick sunsets we used to witness
next to the Dairy Queen--
 
the cumulus clouds floating fearlessly
into the pitch of night
and somehow still remaining visible
like sparkling silver phantoms
shapes like great gray elephants
carrying all of existence unknowingly
beneath their stone feet
 
The whole time I’m in this tin can
masterfully crafted by
the most intelligent of minds
banging around like firecracker snaps
and all I can see is aluminum
all I can teeth is the reverb tracers
of my eyeballs shock from the whiplash turbulence
 
I caught on to the distance between you and I,
I grasped the great connect between
humanity’s universal breath
and our shared, beating heart.
 
 
 

JELLYFISH SPECTRE 
​

​We went silent
so many winters ago
in the aurora
of late night infomercials
in the mute blue TV screens
where love deformed itself
 
right there in that Halsted flat
it just sort of broke its bonds
and like a jellyfish spectre
breathing in the black
cape of a deep sea
I could only watch it
dying
 
slowly pulsing in the half life
of Rx bottles
the traveling will of shifting sands
I tried, I did
 
I’d run myself right through
her quietly sleeping storm
pull her hair from her face
place it behind her ears
and
wait
 
here, I’d scribble my apologies
and fold them into paper wings
open my windows
and fly them across moonlight
drifting down three stories
getting lost in the snowflakes
and city traffic
 
undiscovered still
I set my needle to my table
and played her a song
 
I don't think we ever understood
each other,
I just don't think
that's really the point
anymore.