Two Poems by Lawrence Bridges
August 15, 2023
Between Mid-Centuries
It’s all I have, the blues. Inside these lace curtains in the slow relativity of grandfather time, or is it time fast? I purge slim limbs of troubled blood out-pacing sons. Piles of poet’s meat everywhere, sympathy for all and none. I feel the weight of their wires, tangled into headdresses and restraints. So are mine. But they are mine. I've switched the heat on in the house and admire the gentle tick-free room because the electrons here on the displays now follow me with advice. Sorry, but I wasn’t prepared for these fattening comforts in my current turmoil. I haven’t digested the Mid-century and here we all are, already in another era of slow progress. How far is Mid-century? I mean the next one. I can almost reach it, but time will just flip over all of our assumptions, repeatedly. Worth the wait? I grip wood from a quantum of memory and lie flat. I’m quiet as I breathe from today and bleed from the past, quiet as the quiet future ahead. Music plays but annoys. I learned something today from someone I underestimated. I lie here cautiously. Like no one else has ever said it. I’m wax.
Hollywood at Night
Screen on. Darting to beer coaster to avoid removal from nature. Take the bus. Meet people. Talk about rain or Kneehole and Cressida (a craft ale) or knowing rightful ways through neighborhoods without kissing rearview mirrors. I can talk through headache and ice cream with olive oil. All a treat with no taste or smell. Page down. Page up. Talk about displacement. Try headphones or naps or poverty or restlessness. Nothing comes of organizing as the great grey lever descends. Two models on a date. So fresh. Unanswered by the early nightfall. Victims of excess traffic. I stay put, and, like aluminum crumpling, in nature, never park, shift to the roadway way after midnight when it’s quiet. Mile off headlights. Wet pavement. Alone.
About Lawrence Bridges
Lawrence Bridges’s poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, and The Tampa Review. He has published three volumes of poetry: Horses on Drums (Red Hen Press, 2006), Flip Days (Red Hen Press, 2009), and Brownwood (Tupelo Press, 2016).