Howie Good – Two Poems – 3

Mad Season
by Howie Good

A voice says with something of a giggle, “You can open your eyes now.” I obey automatically. And what’s the first thing I see? An empty train stalled between shuttered stations. All the wise men agree that being sleep-deprived isn’t the same as being deprived of sleep. With summer almost over, the light unravels even faster than the laws of physics would seem to allow. It’s just a matter of time before someone pokes a rifle out a window. We’re going to need some of the constancy and courage of those conscientious little birds that pick the teeth of crocodiles.

The Philosophical Foundations of Nostalgia
by Howie Good

While I was there, I kept thinking, “What the fuck am I doing in Texas?” It was impossible not to imagine some prior catastrophe, a dry white season that had turned whole towns to dust. Of course, I’ve been other places that display the same amazing aptitude for misery. When I feel like that, I sometimes just grab people. They can enter and even change the story to suit themselves.  There’s a lot of revisiting the past. Everything flying around loose lands, and then the souvenir hunters descend from all sides, stepping over guys bundled in boxes and sleeping bags.

Howie Good is the author of three recent collections, I’m Not a Robot from Tolsun Books, The Titanic Sails at Dawn from Alien Buddha Press, and What It Is and How to Use It from Grey Book Press. He co-edits Unbroken and UnLost journals.