"Our Possible Lives", "A Dog Or a Wave", "Reminder", & "The People Who've Been to Hell and Back" by William Taylor Jr.

Our Possible Lives

Born into what we are,

with no recourse

or recompense.

Who could have imagined

such a time and 

such a place?

Everything so sad

and hollow,

nebulous hours,

skies full of ash.

A mess of things behind,

a mess of things ahead.

Our possible lives

drift about like 

bits of conversations

overheard on a bus,

the dead blooming

like weeds

in overgrown fields.

An indifferent wind

blows each moment

through the days

and the years

and we never did 

end up doing 

much of anything.

A Dog Or a Wave

I wasn’t born to be immortal,

never had it in me to hustle that way.

Let my poems be sputtering 

torches in the void.

Should someone find one

on their journey,  

may it lighten their way

long enough to allow 

them to continue

just a little while more,

like a smile from a dog

or a wave from someone

you actually want to see.

Reminder:

Hey you dumbass

wretched half-baked saints,

you slapdash sinners, 

you feckless dupes 

selling your garbage pail souls

to a lesser demon’s lackey

the first chance you get,

you wackos still dreaming

of beauty in the face 

of the machinations

of the dull and monstrous kings

who bleed you like 

the dumb animals you are,

you 5 time suicides,

you muses to the damned,

you elegant weirdos,

you fucking mooks,

you losers dreaming

of victory, too close 

to the sun with your paper bag wings,

you knuckleheaded fools

forever rushing in where angels 

wouldn’t dare —

listen, there’s no time left 

for your bullshit 

or mine.

We’re already gone, and the void 

offers no rewards for our best intentions.

Eternity is a long time not to exist,

so quit fucking around.

Take your grubby little fingers,

plunge them into the fierce

and bitter heart of yourself

and eat.

The People Who've Been to Hell and Back 

The people who've been to hell and back,

you know it right away,

even if they're too polite

to talk about it.

You can hear it in their voices

and smell it on their jackets.

There’s a look in their eyes

that makes you nervous.

Get a few drinks in them

and they’ll loosen up a bit,

tell you 

how Dante only saw the guest rooms

and never set foot in the 

dirty parts of town.

The people who've been to hell and back

will not suffer bad poetry

or good intentions.

They have great fashion sense

and the best record collections.

They find the beauty and the terror

in all the places you never thought to look.

They'll tell you hell is just like 

the most terrible things you've dreamed

only you don't wake up.

They can see all your secrets as if

they were branded in light

upon your skin.

They could tell you your fate

like a cheap vaudeville trick,

reveal your final destination 

in great and unwarranted detail,

but by the time they got around to it

you’d be already there.