Featured Poet: James Lawson Moore

Good morning, today’s featured poet is James Lawson Moore! I met James through social media and am very new to reading his work, but I look forward to reading more!

Brother, Heal

They told me to find

the exquisite pleasures in

my pain, but where does one find

something like that amid

all the screams?

Just a shot of fiery meds

to dull the pain—

for a while I start to feel like

some drunken angel,

come now to

celebrate the last hour

of Armageddon.

My path towards the house

that my father built

is long and full of crooked riddles;

I wanted to go elsewhere and

Rest up for just a brief

bit of eternity,

but it soon became clear

that I couldn’t move

any way but backwards.

Come now, my angel,

come and tell me why I must

linger on

those things which serve

no purpose but to bite.

Where is the good in

so much harm?

I don’t know;

I have no answers—

my head is spinning and

everything I touch looks askew

until I approach the path

back home.

It’s grown up with thorns now,

full of muck and ice

and ruin.

But as bad as it is, I have

no choice but

to believe that it gets better

for me, sooner rather than later.

It does get better, doesn’t it?

James Lawson Moore is a poet and occasional essayist living with his wife and pets in Chase City, Virginia. He has two chapbooks, Our Lady of the Locomotion and Unsocial, available from Alien Buddha Press.