Two Poems

Poetry by Jason Youngclaus

The Kidney Stones

I'd rather wake up in a fuckin’ coffin, bro

Than to this ever-twisting

Butcher Knife.

And maybe then in a medieval dungeon,

With midnight lilies aflutter.

I’d sooner be enslaved in Egypt

Where at least I can feel chains

Wrangling with the moon.

Or be pronounced GUILTY

In streams of Salem sunlight

Knowing the flames were coming

And only then the cold earth. 

But wait!

Morphine—

And suddenly I'm Bobby Weir

Singing Sugar Magnolia blossoms

Blooming—

In Europe '72.

I get up, piss out the 2 inch

Planetary poison—

Hug the nurse, kiss a filthy wall. 

And walk out

into the Eastern Parkway night,

Anchored to a bliss

I never knew could be

Felt. 

Signals

We tumble into virtue

signals harder than dice

against Casino hardwood.

Bounded, we play games of chance

in voting booths brimmed

with toxic paper

totaled by Robber Baron

Shadow Incs—

we press “I voted”

stickers into cell phone cabinets

while children are plucked at random—

eyes wide shut, you opiate and opine—

For it is you, clearly you,

sincerely you, only you

who have been chosen;

heads over tails,

seven over six, edifices over

piles of broken bricks, suburban America

over sullen ash heap,

affordable rent slips under

Gorgian tongues; gouged,

clearly you’ve won

And this time will be different.

Tess is consumed by noise and flames and

the sight of a bar flashing blue—

FINAL NOTICE: service disconnection—

before she can ask

who wrote the all-hands recap

her phone vibrates: a fourth missed call—

OPERATIONS—NATIONAL GRID—

before she can click another link,

before the sun has had a chance to refresh

their dim bulbed pages;

exhausted and cornered before the bell

can lapse a single link

of sunlight through the opaque office window;

she nods at her reflection and

across the office park

a man named Morty curls off

another digital rent slip,

slides it through a floating folder

into a multi-stickered mac book pro,

half flung off a cracked wooden desk

in a low-rise hut, a vibrant haunt

in a city hunted by smog and delirium;

bewondered upon by millions

with monthly transit passes and dreams—others,

they swear they’ll get out of it soon.

They said it last year, the time before,

and the time before that.

But it kept piling up—the documents

laid in corporate lawn chairs

chambers stacked high and

suffocated invisible lungs under brow

beaten chests, so sure

of themselves in their flintless reins,

in their lanes.

BIO: Jason Youngclaus is the author of the poetry collection Little Planet Raisins (Spartan Press, 2020). His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Cathexis Northwest Press, JMWW Literary Journal, Pictura Journal, Oddball Magazine and From Whispers to Roars, among others, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. You can find him on Instagram @jyc_music_lyrics