CARSON PYTELL - POEMS

Carson Pytell is a poet living in a small town outside Albany, NY. His work has appeared in numerous venues online and is currently available or forthcoming in print from such publications as Vita Brevis Press, The Virginia Normal, NoD Magazine, Blue Moon Lit & Art Review, Spank the Carp, Crack the Spine, Futures Trading, Down in the Dirt Magazine, Gideon Poetry Review, and Children, Churches & Daddies, among others. His debut collection, First-Year (Alien Buddha Press, 2020), and his first chapbook, Trail (Guerrilla Genesis Press, 2020), are available on Amazon.

​Mercies

​Though tracing always the paths of voyagers past,
hoping somehow to see new waves or winds,
I, top-decked, posture amidst the spindrift.
 
Flotsam of the endeavor bobs inferentially away,
but, for its sentiments sparked the journey,
jetsam of my spirit I turn from seeing cast over.
 
Past the reaches of the gale the harbor awaits,
where I can unload whatever's cargo and redeem it.
I just have to get through this first.
 
Days out now, it's almost night.
When these winds have passed over
to my room at the stern I'll return and indite:
 
There are no ports
but for all the storms.
I am at their mercies.
 

​Support

​A deaf man smirks at the
painted posterboard:
'SUPPORT THE BLIND!'
 
Across the park a blind man
is tickled to hear:
'SUPPORT THE DEAF!'
 
Then they meet in the middle
and laugh so hard they have to
hold each other up as they walk home.
 

​Liberated

​I don't make a lot, but I don't mind it.
I can buy food, pay the rent. All that.
Cable, phone, internet, got those too.
I can even afford to take that girl
from work out to a nice restaurant.
John in accounting jokes she's loose
but that's no problem with me.
 
When I'm low on gas I don't fret,
when I'm tired I stop for coffee,
when in the grocery line I get gum,
and, if I really wanted to, I could even
buy a bus ticket and go somewhere
I've never been to or heard the name of.
Just the thought makes the week fly.
 

​Switch

​"You know,
you're about to do
what I'm done in
for doing."
 
No pause.
 
"I know
what I'm doing
needs to be done,
I do."
 
A pause.
 

​Day

The distances you travel for me
and infinite forms and figures you take,
like the spoon, sane queen and swan;
white, of golden grace; glimmering, gone.
 
You seem to have places to go,
so never stay quite long enough.
It's why I love the stars at night,
but so much more so at day.