GRANT ARMSTRONG - POEMS

Grant Armstrong’s work has appeared in WINK, Blue Lake Review, From Whispers to Roars, Right Hand Pointing, Poetry Super Highway, The Drabble, and Literary Yard. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi. He is married and has a cat and dog. 

Everything burns
​

​I remember you lying in the hospital bed
I do not remember the last things you said
Except that they were not directed at me
And the room was so cold and the sun
Was absent for your final breath
 
I remember driving home with tired eyes
I do not remember what was on the radio
Took a long shower and almost fell asleep
Then I went out into the woods quite far
and decided I would chop down a tree
 
I remember dragging it back to the yard
I do not remember, though, just how far
I turned that beautiful tree into firewood
And I spent the morning and afternoon
Sitting quietly and watching it burn
 
I remember that you did not want to be buried
I do not remember who should perform the ceremony
Wrote down my will that night and realized how
Little I had and these thoughts continued as I stared
At the ceiling neither trying to fall asleep nor stay awake
 
I remember almost nothing about that day
I do not remember how I got home
Since I had too much to drink
But I stare at your ashes on the mantel
As I throw more wood into the fireplace
 

Individuality 
​

​I have been looking
Into this window for hours
 
And now I can finally
See through it
 
Wondering if one of
Those bricks in that building
Were replaced if the structure
Would look any different
 
Or if it would look just
The same as it does now
 
Wondering what all these small
Pieces mean and if they even matter.
 

Words
​

​I have packaged
I have unwrapped
I have repackaged
What these words
Will sound like
To your ears
Like all my
Conversations in life
The ones that
I can recite
All the time
With an audience
And without rehearsal
Read like a
Script with not
One word omitted.
 

A haunting
​

​Now the depression comes rolling on
And the phone call conversation from
Years ago haunts your ears and all that
Triggered this episode was a single line
From a single song with a single beat
The rhythm, the timing all was just enough
To grab you by the throat and by the balls
And plunge you under water and deep into
Darkness and the rush of adrenaline like cocaine
Has kick-started your mind and your thoughts run
Faster than your emotions but your emotions try to
Keep up but all of this because of one bad decision
And one simple song where environment meets memory
And then some poisonous concoction which gives birth
To something which should never have been conceived
Something never meant to see light or be visible to the world
But now it is completely exposed and you try and re-bottle it and
Try your best, try your absolute damnedest to cover it up but it looks
As bad on paper as it did in your mind and you begin to fear what others
Will think when this is something not for the masses not even for your family
So you have two options: trudge along and refuse to let this speak your true
Intentions or accept it and accept simultaneously that time will never fully
Change what surely will be on constant replay and your eyes are half-closed
But your brain stays wide-awake and sharp just when you want it to shut down
For one minute, for one goddamned minute, one goddamned second but it won’t
Because of one song, and one conversation and one memory long ago now relevant
Again erasure not possible with burning skin and ringing ears and piercing pains like death
or being born or something in-between and all the follies and all the goading all of what is where
it is and all where it was dreaded and the car engine is quiet and the screaming unbearable leads you to believe you need to accept the fact you have been captured, you’ve been had, it’s just this.
 
 
 
 

Augur 
​

​And just as quickly as
I hoped summer would pass
I wish it now to return
Hot days, muggy nights
And even the dreaded sunburn,
The crickets and the frogs
The eventless days all marking
Time passing as we maneuver,
Thrust unfazed into a new season
With older bodies now
Newer memories and much more
Regret realizing not the new
We have discovered but all
That we have somehow left
And in the hurricane of the mind
Where time manifests as an infinite
Storm we call on past events
Remembering we have wished time away
All since we were born
And today and tomorrow and the next
One, too we will eat, we will sleep
And complain we have too much to do
But here is the moment you
Put the book down and lie in the bed
Closing your eyes practicing being dead
Let’s stand in the shape of a cross
And tell each other the worst we know