This Desolation

by Christopher Hivner

My ship has run aground

on an island of shrubs

and rock,

my mate is dead,

and I am starving

on sticks, dirt

and boiled sea water.

The remnants of the Sarah M

sway in the waves,

planks breaking loose

to drift away,

one more piece of me gone.

The beach is covered

in S.O.S messages,

I scan the horizon

as I fish for food to live

but the waters seem to be barren

and the horizon lost.

The paper on which I write

this last statement

was torn from a book

in my trunk

that washed ashore intact.

Apologies to the author

but your words

were of no comfort to me

in my weeks of need

so your pages have become

my epitaph.

Goodbye to the Sarah M,

my home for two years

in my search for

a place to belong.

Perhaps I have found it after all,

here on this desolation

is mayhaps

where I have been destined

all along.

Night Poem

by Christopher Hivner

I can’t see

to write,

attempting an

outside vibe,

but the sun

has gone down,

now I sit

in the dark

with an electric poem

wallowing in my head,

my handwriting in the notebook

disjointed lines

forming not so much words

as hieroglyphics

with no translation.

Go inside, you say,

but the atmosphere

is different there,

artificial light,

separate smells,

no noises of nature,

only the groan

of ancient water pipes

and the slither

of ghosts in the walls.

If I walk away

from my outside mojo

it may not follow me

past the force field

of the door frame.

The poem could be lost

and what if it’s the one,

the lines I’ve been

trying to write

for thirty years?

What if it

could unlock being me

or explain

why people leave?

What if it’s funny

and makes readers laugh?

What if it’s the last poem

I ever write,

one final idea

that solves everything?

My ruminations

have distracted me

while the poem

made its escape,

walking right out of my head

past my pen.

I was a fool

to think I could

capture a night poem

in the light

and now I have to pay

the starry muse

with blank paper.

Christopher Hivner writes from a small town in Pennsylvania surrounded by books and the echoes of music. He has recently been published in Monomyth and Weird Reader. Facebook: Christopher Hivner - Author, Twitter: @Your_screams