Cannon Delight

None of these took me more than five minutes to write. So I'm pretty proud, considering. -->

•••

Country, country, oh far and wide.

Unceasing sight for sight to see,

see the light cease at night,

for forts we fight, fortnights lay siege.

Discomfort fester in a sea

seeking comfortability

wind still whirring, stirring tea

to all the fish, afloat, or flee.

Lifeless, lustless, headless, hauntless

harness lifelessness, be gone with

such and such, or so for whats,

As reason slips. And skips. And cuts.

A newfound friend, a foreign hand

Oh country, country, now our land

You bled and burned and dried and now

this blessed land, not for whom, but how?

•••

Unrepenting southerner, I lay to thee a blow

For somewhere out among the stars,

your reason stands to grow.

Not here, nor there, nor everywhere,

may you tread, black tires forwarding.

Heed, rebellious confederator,

that old Civil forewarning.

•••

I found a cut upon my lip,

Tender and wet across the tip.

My tongue massage, lather, and sense,

whether one slice, or increments.

I found a cut upon my brow,

I saw it yes, but don't know how.

To thee I muse, and feel thy soul,

No clear mirror could I cajole.

Now it is night, I lie awake,

As effects upon my face take.

To know that nicks and cuts abound

returns me to thy battleground.

•••

Away the redbird flew to morn,

wormless, chirpless, now forelorn.

A song he sings to doves and gulls,

"Be mindful of the trigger pulls.

While all wiser, the early riser,

Curtailed hopes may spare a miser.

So dream your dreams and find your fun,

But know I speak for everyone,

there they are,

there may they stay,

lest they sing:

Men, bombs away.

Two-fold is it true for thee,

a stainless bird, a crooning she.

As ivory feathers adorn our nest,

My scarlet cometh from war out west.”

--Eliot Sill

There's these things and they're pissing me off.

Man, fuck coffee. Or fuck my body. Something's not right — I drink a beverage and now I can't control myself? Fucking Parkinson's juice.

Cigarettes are dumb too. I found one at a party last Saturday, brought it home and smoked it. Now it's sitting in my scented candle-turned-ashtray, all tan, white and black tainting the sky-blue wax, a perfect metaphor for itself. I look at it and feel cool for having a cigarette mashed into my candle. It looks cool. That's fucking ridiculous.

I have work in an hour, and it's the worst thing that could happen to me. Working at Jimmy John's, an expanding company that's glorifying a man's idea to rip off the masses for a solidly made sandwich, thus exploiting the fantastic American laziness and allowing Jimmy himself to live his life however he wants, which he deserves no more than the panhandlers that'd love to score a J.J. Gargantuan that day, sucks. It's a minimum wage job that doesn't compensate its employees with a free meal or sandwich (or cookie, or pickle, or day-old bread, or garbage) unless you work a double-shift. I've worked their four hours today already and have 5-and-a-half ahead of me. Let there be life.

Death is such a fag. Hanging over my shoulder every unhelpful second, checking my work and making silent judgments. If this is the last thing I ever write, and it had better not fucking be, I want death to know that I saw its game for what it was.

Sadness too. Sadness can shoot itself in the head with a dick-loaded rocket launcher. It's either there like a blanket, keeping you draped in it so you're impervious to outside emotions, or its worn like a hat, purposefully worn for certain situations for as long as necessary. You take it at your leisure through movies, books or stories about high school kids whose sports teams get better after they die.

Sadness should be like death, hanging over you but mostly avoided. Death should be like work, necessary for most people but totally fucking stupid to do and done for the sake of others. Work should be like cigarettes, trendy and eventually fatal but people do it for some reason anyway. And cigarettes should be like sadness, unfortunately permanent or sparsely but willfully consumed. Coffee should just calm down; whatever.

--Eliot Sill