Carissa Gallo
Carissa Gallo - Photographer in Portland, Ore
Heat from the Tip of Ma’ Smokes
I’ve been focusing on my prose for so long now I almost forgot I was a poet. I just wrote this:
This heat is killing me
Almost as quickly as I can kill myself
I’ve tried quitting, over and over and over and over
And over and over and over and over
I go right back to
Ma’ reds,
Ma’ smokes,
Ma’ ‘bacco sticks,
Ma’ love,
She keeps telling me to stop smoking
It’s bad for my lungs
She doesn’t know what I have to put up with
I make sandwiches
I wouldn’t say for a living, but I do live for the almighty dollar
So I make sandwiches for a living
And I was making a sandwich for a customer when out of the blue
I get called a name that isn’t mine
“White bastids” I hear my father hiss, in my head, in his New York accent
I keep my words to myself
There are some things best left unsaid,
Or so a fortune cookie told me once
I try to forget stupid shit like that, y’know?
Fortune cookies, I mean
I can’t forget what the white people said
Not without ma’ smokes at least
I had a great idea today. It involved being who I wanted to be, regardless of whether or not I had the knowledge to be this person. This person already exists, any, just in the future, where I will eventually meet them, and be them. But the destination is not what’s important. What’s important is the journey. Who will you be between now and then?
I hate listening to jazz sometimes. It depresses me, especially during times like these, before a long commute to work.
I feel like we’re just going through the motions. I felt bad, for a second, then I realized it was fake. It was all a dream. We’re playing chicken, and now both of us are going to crash.
Too many things to be said about this. I watched it on mute (because I’m listening to Coltrane).
(Source: americablog.com)
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