Luke Easter

The Morning Commute

The morning commute brings out the truth
The selfishness
The bitterness
That one feels when put at odds with the rest of humanity
at a disadvantage

An advertisement for nothing

I don’t fit in this world
I’m confused by it
I look around and I see things that make sense
but at the same time don’t make any sense to me
I look up at the sky and can’t see a single star from my rooftop
I look at the freeway
and just see a stretch of cars fading into blinking lights
as they pass the many high poles
and I know this will never end
One strip white as they approach
one strip red as they retreat
all going to different places
all important
all unique
all busy

In one direction I see the city that I have to work in every day
a mass, stacked circuit board of people in a rush
that are getting in my way
kindness stands out in the city
it is the exception to the rule
and when it’s viewed in passing it is a miraculous thing
look to the children when you are in the city, if you want to see real people
because everyone else is just too busy
or homeless

In the other direction I have what people from the country might consider a city
low lying stretch of yellow lights
blocked out by the occasional square, unimportant building
sometimes topped by a small tower that no one will ever shoot a rifle from

This rooftop is my sanctuary
it’s my escape from the box, inside of the box
it’s where I smoke my mostly cigarettes
it’s where I record myself speaking into my phone
and it’s where I breathe the freshest air I can get
as it swirls in from that busy city and mixes with the air from the BQE
I look down at the windows
the many rows of parallel glowing rectangles
all with their own colors
some with patterns
and I rarely see any people
and if I do
they are either doing the dishes
or setting their alarm for the next morning

In the distance there’s a billboard
A tall suspended white rectangle
there’s no advertising on it
there’s nothing on it
it’s just a white rectangle
It’s an advertisement for what I'm talking about
Nothing
The nothing that used to occur on long trips with horse drawn buggies
the nothing of a day
the nothing of fishing
and of listening to insects
the nothing of a sunset
or laying in the grass and looking at the stars
the nothing of a day without spoken words
the nothing of a life lived normally and naturally
this advertisement goes unnoticed by both the white strip of lights and the red
and soon it will be covered in a poster for a 3D movie
and before long that advertisement will be in 3D
and after that maybe they’ll send up artificial lights
to compensate for the thick smog that obscures our stars

Jeni

She liked getting stoned and cracking each other's toes

She loved Danny Devito, who she drew onto an egg and then cried the day she had to eat him

When she blinked one eye stayed down longer than the other

She had done too much acid

She thought clouds were grabbable, like cotton candy, until she was fourteen

She sang "so fresh and so clean" in the shower

She defended the homeless so long as they didn't talk too much

She didn't like anyone who talked too much

She was a kid except when she wanted to be mean

Then she was a practiced adult

She is alive, somewhere, and when she blinks one eye stays down longer

When she showers, she sings

And as I write this she dreams of eating the clouds from the sky

Children's Nursery Rhyme

Send a monkey outerspace
He disappears without a trace
Where's he going?
Where's he been?
He's never coming back again

The Source

A vociferous blast amongst nothing

A pinhole of light shines through

Casting a cone that ends, faded, at his feet

And then another

And another

And so on

Until what was once merely blackness now appears to have limits

A half-dome

Kept from being complete by the very ground you stand on

These holes are just holes

But someone made them more than that

They are looking-glasses into heaven

They are evidence of the realm of gods

As seen from the kiddie-table

They pull us

Guide us

We name them

Connect then with imaginary lines

And then give another name to the product

They project all things past and future

As long as you know how to interpret them

They are most numerous where the air is the clearest

Cleanest

Without them we would still live in this paralyzing midnight

The black dome blushes bluer until it is blue

As the rapturous light takes over everything

Too bright to be captured

Blinding those devout enough to try to see the source

And the holes disappear

These violent declarations of a waking gunfighter

Who fired into the black

He who first revealed the limits of the dark

Daring the emptiness to do something

Anything

Pleading with the design to show itself

But it never does

They fade and retreat into the gradient flush of pale purple

to red

to orange

to almost green

to the truest of blues

And mammoth cotton clouds arrive

To protect them in their slumber

And still the gunfighter watches

Laying naked

With his back flush against the smooth desert floor

His skin too thick to be burned

And he sleeps through the day

As he waits for the next coming of night

To once again challenge the source of this immense light

To at last reveal its true form

In the hope that as a result

He would finally understand

On Becoming an Adult

I wasn't really living
I didn't realize it, but I wasn't
So many things to be done
All by yourself
With nobody to help you
Mom can't do it
So
You're left with only one choice
To become an adult
Or I suppose you could become a homeless person
But I feel like the novelty would wear off pretty quickly
Within a week or two

So

Now

You have a to-do list
Dry-erase marker sitting atop the white board so long it permanently stains it
You gotta renew your car registration
You've got to figure out what the fuck you're gonna do with your life
And you've gotta say you're sorry to all those people you fucked over
And reply to emails

But it's ok

This is the beginning of a new life and the death of another
One day you're gonna turn around and realize that you're out of paper towels
And a baby is gonna throw up on your chest
And you'll think back to this time
Before you became an adult
And you'll wonder who that person was
And where that person went

Well, that's the thing

That rubberstamp image of a person is never accurate
People are ever-developing things
Bodies of water
Pulled by the moon
And the organisms within it
And over the years they become so diverse
and evolved
that the things that grow inside grow legs
And walk right out of them
Into the world outside
And sometimes those things become bigger than the person ever could have been
And for that
The others remember them

For a certain amount of time

Until they're wiped away forever

Dried up

And regarded only as a slight dip in the road
On your way to some new destination

Modern Living

The endless shift of phases
Modes of moods
At one moment seeing beauty in all things
The mold, moles and smog of the world
The ideographic pattern of the oil mixing with the once-clear water
The brilliant coaxing fire consuming someone's childhood home
Like black ants ravishing a fallen ice cream sandwich
And then later
Who knows when?
Or why?
Unable to find a molecule of reassurance
Not in the tin voice of my mother's advice
The oversized bones of a young white lab
Or best rant Chayefsky ever wrote
Nothing
Hopeless
By what means is this switch flipped?
One moment becomes that trapped grain of sand
That develops into a pearl of choking disdain and endwise forethought
A great masher bargained for by the loudest of the children
Adored, embraced as gospel and, yes, forgotten
Then
Once again
All is right inside and out
Simply a moment passed
As fickle as an infant's attention in a crowd
The real human condition
That some might call bipolar disorder
That I would call modern living

Some of Us

Some of us are the lost ones

The thousand yard starers

Grown appreciators of fine patterns

Both planned and accidental

Detectives of moments

Scientists of love and regret

Some of us don't like being the center of attention

The voices wrestling in the air can take you away

And bring the walls rolling in

Some of us are a mystery to ourselves

On an endless nighttime road trip

Of black-ice epiphanies and pothole hindsights

Sometimes we need help

Or a pass for some misdeed

(because we didn't mean it)

We don't agree with half the things we say out loud

We don't like people for something that we also do

And yet we still do it

Something continues to wind us up

Just as it always has

Actions and words that follow some preexisting pencil line

Like termites leaving a chewed trail behind

Leading other mistakes

And following this line that disappears, dipping, in the vast stretch to the horizon

Some of us are lost without a guide

A consoler

An encourager

A beacon

A love

Another one of us

A Word on Subway Performers, Everyone Else

Like so many subway performers

Trying to figure out what works

What their special talent is

The people go on with their conversations

Or smile, recognizing his tune

Or nothing

No reaction at all

This man

Only a set of mismatched sneakers

And a plastic bag tambourine of shaking, settling coins

Oh, God is on your side

I hope you've enjoyed my song

Anything will help

A penny is good

A dollar's better

(laughs, alone)

I'm hungry

And in the next car is another starving man

Singing

My baby does the hanky panky

With the most endearing smile

The whitest teeth

You've ever seen

Just and flourishing with his place in the world

Like a tiny fish swimming in unison with his surroundings

In the mouth of a much larger fish

the little things

It’s not the those monster Hindenburg occurrences that gets you
No
It’s the little things that finally do you in
The tiny triangles of fiberglass under the collar at the wrong time
The insolent little bastard on the train calling time out too many times
A cut in the hot pretzel line
A snorting laugh that was never so brilliantly awful
These are reminders of the spectacle of humanity
Calling it fate is to consider yourself more important than you really are
This is not His plan
To say there’s a plan is to turn a blind eye to the obvious
That in a world of billions
All is
Was
And will be
And what never was
Will still be reported as fact
This is not God’s will
This is you daily newsletter from the human race
That dandruff in your coffee
That doppler effect fuck you with your hands full
Hold on tight to someone
And don’t ask too many questions
Because denial is your savior
And only ego can crush you
So when you walk up to your car
And see the galaxy spread of blue cube window glass on the ground
Your GPS stolen
Your prescriptions rifled
Just laugh
At the absurdity of it all
And buy yourself a peanut butter and chocolate shake at lunch time

Sucked into the Land of Giants

I sit here

Me and Dillinger

We're both pretty sad

I'm watching him because Ricky went to go see Trish in Brooklyn

He misses Ricky

I've sunken deep into a chair that used to be mine

Smoking dry flakes



The black rectangle

The missing front to an empty drawer

A part of the world that doesn't quite fit

Like those robot lights at the Rail

Systematically shucking and jiving

Like a futuristic exterminator shooting invisible lasers



It commands attention

This booming black rectangle

It holds all of my fears, the hotlink to my stowed pricklers

A window to the unknown

It sucks me in

It becomes whatever is on the tip of my mind's tongue

Werewolves

Gloria

Gloria

Ants and Giants


Giants walk around and spit on gatherings of the small things

The tiny people try to swim out of the plasmic jelly

They struggle until it's over and the giant thinks nothing of it

Like tearing a leaf or smoothing out an ant hill

Everything is something else's god

My Sore Throat

My sore throat would heal
If I could just stop singing
On my way home from work

307 Words

People say
well more often whisper than actually say
that things used to be
(before they got out of hand)
much better than they
as a result of technology and evil things
have become
and that if these evil things
which they could never understand
could be erased from memory
things could possibly
(though many knew it would never happen)
go back to the way they once were
a much simpler life
a much more simple existence
free of the pain of which people have become accustom
free of the influences of living idols who’s views are not welcome
views more like instructions than suggestions
on all aspects of existence
which were ultimately accepted by those too-young
or weak to remember what "once was"
was
few still exist and even these few have started to forget
giant billboards
too-fast cars
barely clothed teenage girls praised for their false uniqueness by the world
Nutrasweet burning tunnels through their brains
and that coffee-house chain
(you know the one)
that spreads like death before medicine to the edges
cameras watching the people watching the cameras watching the people
etc.
plastic cellophane enclosing everything
slowly making our world disposable
the very speed and stupidity at which everything now travels
dulls their minds into a shape resembling all the others
comparable to the inmate
the president
the stripper’s friend
the whistling mailman
or anyone really
except of course for the original
the original being what might have been had life taken it’s course
un-tampered by the steady beat of the invisible Sony speakers
that drone out all thought which was before nonexistent
all thought which engages the steady demise of true life
but these forgotten few
who whisper ever so quietly
will soon too be gone
and all which was once great can be leveled and covered in hot
already hardening
tar

USE WITH CAUTION THIS ABILITY TO SEE YOURSELF, AS YOURSELF

Laying here I can't help but think of the despicable things I've done. Living with memories that can't be skewed is new to me. I've always done things I regretted, as we all have, but now it's different. My young misdeeds were still derived from a place of positive intentions. A good person's indiscretions. These new things cannot be undone or sorried away with a handmade card or a week's diligent kindness. I've become a person I despise. Having broken all of my own rules and stepped on my downsliding set of values is worse than never having incepted them in the first place. I am a failure at being good and you can dump all the freshcut flowers you want to on that, but it doesn't change the truth. This didn't happen overnight. I shuffled sideways into the dark and now I will forever reek of these foul cigarette-stream acts of selfishness. I can only try from here to reverse course and reach out for the remnants of who I used to be, hoping that what I grasp at doesn't crumble like dust in my hands. The soft sheen of what's left behind is the the needless reminder that I feel between my fingers as my mouth moves, saying things that are, in retrospect, hypocritical. And still there's this urge to say I'm sorry, but as we both know, that is a phrase meant to make the speaker, not the listener, feel better. I have no right to say I'm sorry. In its place I will say I love of you that which makes me hate what I've become and without this love, this desire to head back up the river, I would die right here and now, regardless of how lovely a day it is or that my dogs are watching me write this.

Two Girls

We’re sitting too close to the screen

The images are distorted, threatening to tip onto us

On the way out two girls approach us

One blonde with glasses and one brunette with long curly hair

The one with glasses is adorable, hard not to look at

She has that pull that makes me sweat

The other is asking me for a cigarette

Tommy gives her one

She’s proud of her interesting accent

The blonde just smiles away

The brunette is asking us about the movie

It was all right, we say

She says she’s from Tel Aviv

I can tell Tommy doesn’t know quite where it is either

She says she’s visiting

She asks if we smoke weed

She asks if we want to go back to a place they have

I’m picturing an apartment that has little in common with the real one

She says this to me while the little blonde smiles at Tommy

The two of them kicking phantom rocks

He looks at me and his face says the decision is mine

He has a girlfriend

I can’t make fast decisions

I’m still stoned

She’s looking at me, expecting a yes

No, we’ve got to get back to Brooklyn

And the joy drops from the air like a single sheet of rain, already drying

We’re all disappointed in me

Well, thanks for the cigarette

Tommy and I walk off

He says they were holding hands on the way in

And that he was surprised I turned them down

I say it just happened too fast

But really I just couldn’t stand to watch

As he grabbed another one right out of the air in front of me

What Needs to Be Done

Tomorrow

I’ll fix it all tomorrow

I’ll buy the damn bags

I can’t even clear the trash without the right bags around here

This mess touches everything

But for now there’s none of that

This is my window

I take it everyday

The time between work and sleep and work

I’ve been hiding from real life forever

And I’m terrified of letting this go

It’s all I know 

And what needs to be done looks like slow boring death

The window keeps getting smaller

Soon brick walls will surround me

And part of me thinks I will actually be set free

Seeing clearly now what was always right there

I’ll make all the phone calls

I’ll clean the tub

I’ll clean my car

And go food shopping

Or pay my parking tickets

I’ll say goodbye to you

Tomorrow

The Whiskey's Wish

like a rock in your shoe, there it is

that daily reminder that what was, wasn't

a sore elbow that flashes of ugly declarations

or a sting during that morning piss that resonates of bad judgment

it's that reckoning of lost morals slapping you with you

the ink in your dream water

the hair in your cereal's milk

 

this scar on your face, it's a tell

that longed look of the vibrating worries

others sense there proximity to loose teeth

or smell shit buried under the carefully plotted words from you, the liar

it's the whiskey's wish for you to stay at this laundry matt

the ghost that makes your eyes puffy

the "L" name in your cell phone

 

Like that rock in your shoe, this is what is real

The Post Passive Aggressivists

And stand and state your purpose!

What is your purpose, sir?

Well, I don’t know what you mean

The question is simple and I wont repeat it

I don’t know my purpose

I don’t know what you mean

Are you refusing to cooperate?

I don’t know my purpose

This man is refusing to cooperate!

I don’t even know why I’m here

You’re here for the good of the many

Same of the rest, just like me

And me

And me

And me

And me

And me

And none of us are leaving

until somebody can state their purpose!

Pigeons Under a Bridge

It’s getting dark and the ground is wet

Someone has splattered yellow paint across the buildings

The whine of a squeaky wheel

Sounds more like rats than birds

Pigeons in the underbelly of the overpass

Violent flutters and pecks

They are all attacking one

He jumps and flaps as they push in closer

Trying to stay on the rail

What is it about him?

Why doesn’t he fight back?

Or just fly away?

You could ask the same of any of us

I threw a rock to make them take flight

But it did nothing to break the attack

As I looked for another rock on the ground

It occurred to me