More poetry by Peter Kaczmarczyk

Here on our final day of October Stories, are more poems by Peter Kaczmarczyk.

A Home For Jim’s Zombies

How many years in a lifetime, she keeps asking in my dreams

I cannot answer her, history is no more than my memories of it.

They are sitting on the couch, pupils wide and faces flushed,

LSD electric in their blood.

I turn my head quickly to the side,

they are no more than shadows in the corner of my eye.

Phyllis and Sherene, women that I love,

passing joints and idle chat, unaware of the curse we share.

Jim and Mark, not at all alike, joined in drug induced revelations.

Jim sees zombies in the wallpaper,

marching to the music of old Genesis,

pushing through the head high bushes,

he describes it to us in vivid details.

I can almost see them too, yet we all laugh at the threat

They have not come for Jim yet.

Ron sits in the corner, ink in his hand,

painting a pattern on his blue jeans,

a work in progress for two years.

A towering web of buildings over buildings over streets over land over nothing,

winding stairways that go everywhere but never seem to reach me,

sharp edges, searing colors, impossible angles of Dr. Seuss.

A home for Jim’s zombies.

I say with conviction “A black pen is the most powerful weapon”

Ron laughs at me, as if an artist would know.

A voice comes to me

Sherene needs a cigarette and I have one.

She smiles at me.

I am afraid of her.

Jim and Phyllis hold hands, love visible to my eyes as they talk to me

I do not know what they say.

Phyllis’ hair is starting to return,

she has removed her scarf and I find it kind of sexy.

I see the zombie in her eyes and pray it is an illusion,

yet I have no god to pray to.

Mark holds a can of Bud, cross-legged beneath the wall of zombies,

the table set for destiny to be served.

Midnight comes and goes, and we grow slowly tired.

Jim and Phyllis disappear into his room.

Ron is gone, and I cannot recall if he was ever there at all.

Sherene wishes to join me, but I refuse.

I do not see her pain as I leave the room.

She stays with Mark and they talk till dawn.

A light snow falls on Boston.

How many years in a lifetime, Phyllis asks in my dreams.

Her bald head in the moonlight,

she prays to her god for me, yet I can only scream.

I have no god to pray to.

I ask her is she has seen Mark but she is gone.

I cannot recall if she was ever there at all.

Potpourri

Her apartment smelled of death

The death of hope

The death of dreams

Mixed together with

The sickening scent

Of cheap potpourri

A cat rubbed his leg

Meowed, wondered

Where she’d gone

Not knowing

She was never coming home

She had died

A junkie’s death

Strung out on

The need for feelings

That would never

Come to her again

Snapshots

You shared yourself only

in snapshots, still lives and bullet points

that you’d mix and match in different contexts,

present in ever shifting ways.

Sometimes you’d dress in black,

not to be goth but to make us wonder

if your choice of color was just the latest fashion

or a reflection of your soul.

Somedays you were white, flowing wispy and pale,

and then you would sing,

marvelous tones that drifted and soared,

touching multitudes of shades and hues.

We loved you no matter,

as you dealt yourself out like cards,

each one a piece of you.

We only wanting understanding

when you were giving none away.

One last snapshot, a solitary stone,

surrounded by a shimmering aura that sparkled,

played hide and seek around our eyes,

as they filled up with tears.

Who Wants to Live Forever

Steven was always on the edge

He would push the pedal and pick fights

Mix more and more drugs

Into just the right cocktail

Adults would roll their eyes

And mutter how kids today

All thought they were immortal

That no matter what they did

They thought they would come to no harm

And they hoped Steve didn’t learn he was wrong

Before adulthood came to sweep him away

Steven would always drive too fast

In the hand me down Hyundai that had been his brothers

He liked to boast that the tiny silver car

Was where his virginity was lost

Cast aside in the dark of night

The story he never told

Only a few of us know

Was that it was also what he used

To drive Susan to her back-alley abortion

That went so horribly wrong

A terrible price to pay for being

Unable to face the consequences of reckless living

She was hardly missed, folks just saying

She was here one day and then one day gone

An unstable girl who just wandered along

People never understood

Steve didn’t want to live forever

It was not fearlessness that fed him

It was terror and a never-ending sadness

A life that had never known joy

He prayed that he might miss a turn

The thrill of living long gone

He didn’t think he would live forever

He feared living another day

So he pushed for death with reckless abandon

Trying to escape from living

In a present filled with pain and despair

And a future that would know no other way of being

Bio:

Peter Kaczmarczyk is a lifelong writer who has only started seriously pursuing poetry in the last few years.

He is a native Masshole but was willing to move to Indiana when he heard there were Dunkin Donuts there.

His writing is often assisted by cats, who think they can do better than him by walking across the keyboard when he is not looking.

Peter has been published in several dozen journals and anthologies and has one chapbook, Distant Yet Always Heard, from Alien Buddha Press.

Peter is co-creator of the Captain Janeway statue in Bloomington, Indiana.