Sausalito (by Paul Corman-Roberts)

Paul Corman-Roberts

Sausalito

Here
liquid runs uphill
4 AM always a festival
of incandescent light enough

to recite poems
from the cold black water
of Richardson Bay
to blackened art galleries
and distant seafood grottos

Here
you can’t throw a hissy
without hitting a musician
a writer
an artist
or one of their installations. 

Funny
how the smell of money
draws the perpetual
abstract hustle of the mind.

And it colors in so nicely
and lights up so vivid
and everyone owns a business
or is a contractor
and no one has a job
and everyone knows their place
and it’s all good.

Because your next meal is pre-destined.
the roof over your head pre-ordained
and there won’t be any other jobs
and there won’t be openings in residency
any time soon.

Thanks for coming
to buy us out of our
artisan crafts and
our custom gourmet foods. 

Thanks for admiring
our festive decorations.

Now please be on your way;
you can’t spend the night here.

[“Sausalito” originally appeared in issue 6 of Out of Our magazine in 2011.]

Paul Corman-Roberts is co-founder of the Beast Crawl Literary Festival
in Oakland, California.  He is a compulsive organizer and writer of
frequently subversive words.  His out of print collections of poems and
flash are 19th Street Station from Full of Crow Chapbooks, 2011; Neocom(muter) from Tainted Coffee, 2009; and Coming WorldGone World (The Abomunauts Are Coming to Piss on Your Lawn) from Howling Dog Press, 2006.

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Rolling the Dice One More Time at the Last Chance Ego Death (by Paul Corman-Roberts)

Paul Corman-Roberts

Rolling the Dice One More Time at the Last Chance Ego Death

You aren’t really

taking the time

to enjoy being

away from home.

& even if you danced

it would still

be less frenetic

than your quietude

& if we groped

ardent & fumbling

it would be

more serene still

than your imperious meditations

& if we reach

that vista where

our convergence ends,

will you take

but one moment

 

to look in my eyes

to look in my scars

to look in my thorns

and how far

will you run

when you see

the mesh nest

I made for you

there?

Paul Corman-Roberts is co-founder of the Beast Crawl Literary Festival in Oakland, California.  He is a compulsive organizer and writer of frequently subversive words.  His out of print collections of poems and flash are 19th Street Station from Full of Crow Chapbooks, 2011; Neocom(muter) from Tainted Coffee, 2009; and Coming WorldGone World (The Abomunauts Are Coming to Piss on Your Lawn) from Howling Dog Press, 2006.