Tag: love

skulking around

by Shane Gannaway, posted in poetry

contrary to koyczan’s theory,
people fall for each other at

vastly different speeds. you have
sudden crushes, minor collapses,
dead drops.

***

A skulk is a group of foxes.

***

through the door dungeon

a spider, a monkey, a holy spirit,
a man you once loved, and just
like,

a dungeon of doors.
metal, wood, metal
and wood; glass
even.

what a terrible adventure.

***

over & over again
is life
& off the swivel chair
into traffic & then back to the office
over & over again.

researching gold, the wiki
page is an information mine.

they say the element was
produced in a supernova:
nucleosynthesis. you know
those tiny dots in the sky?
the stars, silly. “don’t talk
about work

right now,” I’m not. but the stars.
that’s them colliding. dead stars.
ghost stars colliding.
& after,
the dust,
there’s gold in there.
“what?” she asked.

***

nothing leads to nothing

Waiting to get taken back to my home planet

by Shane Gannaway, posted in poetry

Eight hours between two beds
& this is where it falls apart.
I’ve never felt more rested though.

***

Not everyone has a light behind
them. Not everyone is lovely. There
are shambles and people who live in
them & become shambles
themselves. These are the destitute

in spirit, the lost from love & drive.

They exist, in the countless, by the scores.

A suburb is a collection of shambles.
The projects are neglected monuments
for those keeping track. Don’t ask what
for, I did not build them.

***

“…heading out to the property” oh! the property.
Who’s properly partying with you on your goddamn property?
Wife, kids, a nice dog. Keep up
the path and in less than a decade you too can fuck
a young, buoyant intern on “the property.”

***

I feel like I’m the only one on this world who thinks it’s macabre
to get married on a plantation. “People do it all the time.”
What? Would you get married on a murder site? In a gas chamber?
What if outside it were pretty? Would you get married where
people were raped? What if it happened 200 years ago?
What if the ghosts were quiet? I guess ghosts are quiet here.

I want to get married in a graveyard full of confederate corpses,
& we can dance on their graves to ‘The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,’
& then we can try to conceive something in a copse of thin trees
near a headstone,
& I’ll ask you if you know about the Allen curve, & you’ll just grin,
& you’ll pull back on your wedding skirt & adjust it,
& the spacecraft will appear in a moonless, starless sky and beam us up
already.

Happy Valentine’s Day Everything is Fleeting Hahahahaha

by Shane Gannaway, posted in poooooosts

Sum it up: take every cliched song, movie,
show about friendship and love, then promptly
shatter. Sounds about right to me.

That’s how it went.
What I meant to you,
vice versa, where was the losing in that? And even in a loss
do you have to plead ignorance to my identity? It’s bad enough
my romantic parts get rejected, do you have to toss
away the friend card too? As in, us existing now
relates to a tiny slice of memory, only expanding in
on itself, like only a memory can. If so, sure, fine
that’s great, but you know what would be really great?
Hearing your voice
in that familiar, lite
lilt you get when
you’re happy to see
someone.

The Best

by Shane Gannaway, posted in poooooosts

I saw you as Ophelia in Hamlet.
You were the best actor in the play.
When you laughed, I believed you were happy.
When you died, well, I guess I knew you were alive
still. Not to say you didn’t play a perfect corpse;
you were phenomenal. But the Laertes didn’t sell me,
and your Hamlet wasn’t nearly sulky enough.

Did you get me into ghost-girls, or was I always this spooky?
Anyway, Shakespeare puts me in a holy state. Like, I can relate
to it all, even a confused rich girl with her heart set on a prince.
I feel like an angel and a tart. When I watch you I want to wash, rinse,
restart.

everyone is in love

by Shane Gannaway, posted in poooooosts

short dirty blonde, unwashed mop of hair,
here, in the line in front of me, chatting

about the coffee shop she worked at
with the barista. maybe he’s not smitten,

but I assume everyone is in love.
look at how I fall over long peach legs

under high-waisted jean shorts.
unwashed hair, here, wasted in listening
to their conversation, I spy some tattoos

on the inner portion of her forearm. stars?
a sun? no, those are eyes peeking around

her form, around the room, maybe spotting
me spot them. spy on spy.

it’s a saunter. that’s what she employs as she
leaves the shop, sipping thru a straw, hips swaying

as she subtle-struts down the sidewalk. shit man,
what did I want to order again? my mind went out with the unwashed hair.

bless me, bless you

by Shane Gannaway, posted in poooooosts

maybe she just needed someone to drop off some albums with,
and her favorite pair of pants. but

maybe she thought that wine stain wouldn’t come out. that dashes
a previous theory, but maybe…

so the wine spill was purely accidental, and she had kissed me that one
time, (I think)

it could have been all an act, but she insisted I borrow the books,
(maybe she had too many books…) so in that case she only

wanted to get laid, and I was too eager to please,
and get laid. well then, damn,

look, here I’ve gotten myself all worked up
over what this could maybe be; stop.

a cat has been let out of some box (I have the aphorism
wrong) and somehow I’m reading the signals
as strong when they’re weak, man.

I get caught up in tiny things, tan lines,
how they look
when they sleep; maybe I can actually try and stay,
I tell myself.
and, jeez, look
they’re already running for the hills,
I’m blind to the signals, signs.

***

I get a text too soon to count as,
what? regrets, I guess. someone was too
into me. she got scared, she said.

I like getting scared. you’d think I’d
like getting scarred the way I look for knives

on belt loops, inside cute backpacks,
on a bralette strap. I gotta kick more people out
of bed, namely myself.

someone kick me, pinch me, fuck me up;
I do it wrong to myself.

***

“look at me, don’t look at me” the reeling
pumps out into my ears. passion pit. this is a

pit. take it easy, surfer. no need to get blood
out on the desk. shark mouth in checker-print

is somehow more violent,
but not as violent as these excel sheets and
email chains.

back in the time of sticks and stones they used
rocks and leaves from trees. I guess

I’ve got ingénues running around my dreams
with waist long lavaliers,

which is never a good sign. it’s an awful omen
in truth. Chance chatters in my ear, you strafe

around my memories, “oh, a hug,” that surprise kills
me, makes a waif
out of me. who isn’t a wounded animal these days?

if the hug isn’t obligatory (fucked up and fucked
all my friends) should one even attempt it?

last thing I want is a pity-embrace. someone needs
to put me down already before I get it in my head
I can get ahead

in this world, of you, any sort of lead. it’s all lost.

Passwords

by Shane Gannaway, posted in poooooosts

She is prodigal in her compassion, sneaking up behind
me just to make my day with a cry of ‘surprise’ or something
of that ilk.
We don’t go together well, like polyester and silk
draped over some dipshit king in traditional ugly fashion.

Sundays painted over with rain make me want to rewind.
Back in some old house I fought for casual times in your presence
but I can’t keep cards close to my chest and I fear I was less than opaque.

There’s been a break since I’ve been in front of a camera. I’m out of money.
I smoke mostly resin
these days. Black tar-like shit in the bottom of bowls and inside glass pipes

gets lit up, smoked up. You make me want to not give-up when I see you promoting
yourself, your brand. Your favorite band is playing the city soon. Maybe I can swing
a ticket, and maybe you’ll be there, and I’ll nonchalantly wave, and keep debonair
throughout the night, past sobriety, and we can slide into a sticky summer
messiness we never quite got the chance to find before.

Sundays stay getting painted over with rain, let’s get naked in the evening,
stay naked in the morning, and let’s see what we find now.