three poems
by Brandon Shane
Poem About Loneliness
I watch the men under the sun, clinging to asphalt,
wearing hardhats, softhats, bald or hair to the eyeballs.
They don’t appreciate the flowers, or the birds,
the day is work and talking about women.
I watch them from the porch, drinking beer, bad shoulder
and useless. The rain is seasonal, the cars trip
over their heels, all day and night the street is Cancun,
the drunk and drugged robbed by poor shamans.
I watch the men, peacocks without tails, dreaming
of love under the summer clouds, so hot your bones soften
and your flesh cooks like a cheap cut of meat.
I want to invite one in, slow dance in drag,
take the last pack of cigarettes my father purchased
before his lung cancer diagnosis,
perch one between their lips,
let them smoke it.
The Sadness of Closets
They take to the walls, the basements,
the empty rooms wherever they can find them,
between the trees where city lights
and freeways have yet to converge.
They see something in the fog
early mornings, listening to birds, feeling
a note of freedom.
I touch his cheek,
and he emerges after a decade
consuming the roots of his daydreams,
how are you dear
don't you remember our love,
what does the church do for you,
not even believing in God,
only comfortable kissing
in abandoned cisterns,
the angry toad, the woodlands,
history is not your forte,
the face I would die for
has many odd expressions,
I watch my beautiful man
lie in a river and flow.
Elderberry
The boys are hanging from the roofs,
the ones I thought I would grow up with,
get old with, and maybe
one of them would get older in my bed,
die in my bed, maybe,
or I would die in theirs.
I’d like to say I’ve stopped the booze and
running away and getting into fights with teachers
who cared about me once but
figured I was just another blow up kid,
it took me a while to go the city library
and café bookstores, I guess I just did
didn't have the courage
thinking of the old men who took
my sunlight and stomped it into a plum, dark
and sweet and splattered on asphalt like tomatoes
running down the chin of a bad aristocrat,
they were all boys, and young men
and I was a boy, and now I’m a young man and
I’m reading a little bit of Camus
thinking I existed before,
sometimes I pray to God
when strange men blow me kisses on the metro
wondering if God is confused why now
and not the other times I really needed him,
but God doesn’t know it’s bad practice
to only call when it comes to big things
sometimes you need to start with coffee,
and it keeps me up thinking
if God is just another old man that frightens me,
if God really has any desire to fix it all
or if he’s the old man groping his sweatpants,
having no lack of vivid prayer
from the gay boys, the gay young men,
if God is the old man
standing beside his red brick patio, the green buds,
an almost Château, chicken shed, the manicured dog
that gives us a false sense of safety,
inviting us in
paying our rent,
taking up our end
of the bargain.
Photo of Brandon Shane
BIO: Brandon Shane is a poet and horticulturist, born in Yokosuka, Japan. You can see his work in trampset, The Chiron Review, IceFloe Press, The Stone Circle Review, Argyle Literary Magazine, Berlin Literary Review, Acropolis Journal, Grim & Gilded, Ink in Thirds, Dark Winter Lit, among others. He graduated from Cal State Long Beach with a degree in English. Find him on Twitter @Ruishanewrites