TWO POEMS by WILLIAM TAYLOR JR.
It’s a world full of tourists ordering complicated drinks
and our lives just an awkward silence
beneath a temporary sun
stillborn moments
caught in the air like mist
and they wonder why we don't
want to get up in the mornings
you can turn on your computer
day or night and become friends
with everybody in the world all at once
and it's lonelier than anything
you could have ever imagined we waste the day in hand
yet petition the gods for more
sifting through the rubble of it
for some expired sliver of grace
some busted trinket cast from eternity
so that we might forget death
for another hour or two
honey those sirens out there
they sing for someone
give me one last shot of useless beauty
as it all comes down upon us
see I never wanted to save the world
just to make it back home before dark.
Telling the Sky
The days and the hours slip off
to wherever it is they go
I spend what's left of my time
trying to flee the traps in which
I've caught myself
this abiding loneliness
it is our birthright, inseparable
from anything else we might
dream to be
accepting the truth of it
I imagine is the first step
on the path to something
even the poets eventually
run out of things to say
about beauty
sex and death
and simply long to collapse
on some dirty street corner
in San Francisco
or New Orleans
drinking dark wine
telling the sky
I am empty
I am empty
my god
I am empty
and feeling no shame
in the embrace of it.
William Taylor Jr. (he/him) lives and writes in San Francisco. He is the author of numerous books of poetry, and a volume of fiction. His work has been published widely in literary journals, including Rattle, The New York Quarterly, and The Chiron Review. He was a recipient of the 2013 Kathy Acker Award, and edited Cocky Moon: Selected Poems of Jack Micheline (Zeitgeist Press, 2014). Pretty Things to Say (Six Ft. Swells Press, 2020) is his latest collection of poetry. A new collection is forthcoming from Roadside Press.