PAUL LOJESKI - POEMS

Paul Lojeski was born and raised in Lakewood, Ohio. He attended Oberlin College. His poetry has appeared online and in print. He lives in Port Jefferson, NY

Near the End

I'll only need a chair 
by the window to get 
comfy in, nursing coffee 

or sips of cool water, 
whiling away the days, 
examining ever-changing 

skies, treetops bending 
in breezes or a plane's
contrail ribboning the heights. 

Not much to ask for, really, 
unless you consider the odds 
against it, in this wilderness

we call living. Still, it's only
a chair by the window, just
a chair by the window.

​

Ghost
​

Old man sits at a desk,
hunched over, intense,
office-bound. Familiar 
to me I must admit.
Yes, I'm sure I know 
him from a long 
time ago, maybe Santa 
Cruz or Moab, his name 
on the tip of my tongue. 
But that guy moved 
with the wind, rumbling
down a new road on
a whim, not caring where 
it went. I remember him 
now as clear as day, 
as if he were me.


​

​Gifts and Givers, Disappeared

In the village of old age, jewels
of gratitude shine brightest.

But in such generous light, gems
offered cry out for acclamations.

Love and comfort tendered, 
touch and tenderness delivered,

casually overlooked in the giving,
brushed aside in the rush of time.

So on this rocky road, what is
owed is painfully clear but too

late to convey for the givers are
gone and the gifts disappeared,

​

Wherever We Go
​

1.

The bone of existence beaten down
by the tiny fists of men, beating
the dirt, beating the bleeding dirt.

2.

He stood in a field staring up at
the night sky, thinking about Mars
and how they’re planning

to colonize it—have settlements
of humans living in glass-domed
structures—like ants in an ant farm--

and he wondered, how long before
the first fist forms and a hard blow 
is struck, before red jealousy,

the heart-rattle for power or some
ancient tribal voices shake
the manufactured air,

screaming for war. It will happen
as surely as the sun will shine
for another billion years

before heating up and sizzling away
all life on Earth. Wherever we go,
we’ll drag it with us, that leaden

darkness of violence, spreading across
the solar system—wherever we go,
the bone of existence being beaten down.

​