Poems by Grant Souders

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EXCERPT FROM PINK BRAIN

Avocados were ripening in a brown bag.
George entered the apartment just as someone was leaving
purple is a funny word.
Do you mind if I use it?

The phones and the phone calls
are queuing  up together  Sometimes
in late hours of the evening when happen two people
hiding in the green room 

to strange and multiple metals, high in the .
And the phone, too, will keep ringing.
Ringing under the stars, our heads and vision distorted.
How much time is there?

Not enough time to make a man
of you, you dandelion.
In the end, you’ve got to want
to know that you want to know it.

Or else, pick up the bag. If nothing less, do it 
at least one time.

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Are you guys there gonna quit goofing on me?
Someone laughing
It isn’t Pam.  Where are you, you guys?
Come on.  Kirk?

An incomprehensible roar from the shadow of a live oak
The killer who is now touching his face that is someone else's face.
The moon cut on one side by the earth’s shadow and on 
the other by a cloud.  We could go far in our discussion of nature and violence.

We yelled your name so we knew you couldn’t hear us.
I think we oughta go.  Do you have the keys to the van?
We don’t have any keys.  The van stands there beneath the cut moon.
We can’t leave because they come looking for us.  

But we can’t all think this way, else we all stand still.
No one every finding any other one.  You are stuck and still
with the ones you came with.  Your arrival here will be you.
Sudden the yelling out of a name.  Let the voice travel where we can not.

Kirk!  Stop screaming. 
Then screaming.

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Alex is not well enough. Tomorrow’s plan making.
Making plans for tomorrow.  A thousand or two
luminescent objects across my field of vision.
I guess I could.  I guess I could go back.  No need to ask.

The reason for a grouping of lights or how they came so.
Belief enough for two minutes in the sand and the sun.
What is it that I have begun on this table, does it rivet?
No.  Every beast will want to destroy you.

In the cavern deeply where you came from they will,
even before, anoint you in beige and cover you
in blood from what you have done. With two swords
or one, or a small misguidance.  It does not matter.  We will

remember the name of a book and a human shield.
Neither alone.  Each discovering that they are resting
wholly on one another.  My friend said he came from a place.
Describe it.  I don’t have to. We will and we will not

destroy the worldly.  This is the world.  This is the world.
Take me first.  Has anyone, anyone come back?

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The waiter is carrying empty bottles in one left hand
and in the right are full, opened bottles.  
Like an airplane, she weaves.  She leaves out a sensibility, 
a collection of empty and full bottles only to say 

I don’t think Jason had no idea of the idea of death.
The mother knows the sense of being lost.  I am hoping so.
Crying for return, for return then death, crying for resurrection.
One is a legend who refuses to die, and so she carries nothing.

Meanwhile, me in a silly duster hat, climbing up 
big brown legs.  I don’t have any expectation of what will happen,
but I know I don’t intend to be in this place 
for the rest of my life.  A helicopter to scoop me up.

Like sudden fire in the timber, you watch and pray
because you believe your belief in this moment in your life,
and that it is not without purpose.  That she will see you die, and you
will be the better for it.  Nothing without purpose and with it.

Give me a hand of bottles and I will tell you what it is,
but I do not know the weight of it.

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