New Poems - Unpublished

A Brief Shadow Overtakes the Dead and Dying

The air is black.

The headstones on my right,
Lined with shadows
By my bobbling bike light.

The air is empty.

I glide the sidewalk alone,
Making irregular shadows
In a strangers passing headlight.

The tomb is stuffed.

What role could the creamy colored mausoleum play
Except a barricade against the idea of decay.

The tomb is off-white.

The night air pushes through my thin shirt,
Chilling the darkness of my chest.

And my shadow grows up from behind me –
An elliptical, unruly unfolding –
Overtaking the field of pale stones
In the pithy passing of a big light.

I want to be beautiful,
But this is enough.

ISO Spring Flowers

But I also like dead flowers

Let their parched petals drip
Drip drop
Onto the stained linoleum
Whose cracks jab at your toes
Every dark December morning

But I also like dead flowers

Let their little leaves
Be fast forgotten
Because everyone—forever
And everywhere, plus you—forgets
That flowers, too, must 
Pray for sunshine everyday

But I also like dead flowers

Let the last of the life support water
Start to dry and stain the glass
With it's calcium and white cake chlorine
As the death is deemed final

But I also like dead flowers

Let their stalks be
Stiffer than the wind
Against the back you bare
To the thin sun

I’ve just about had it with the flowers

A Man and His Pineapple

I celebrated my birthday, on Instagram
And had a pineapple delivered to seal the deal

I broadcast a picture of my face after taking
One hundred pictures of my face

Debated the correct combination of caption and expression 
That illustrated joy, remorse, privilege-guilt, hope, authenticity – all at once

Knowing that the more I said – the more perfect it was made –
The less it would mean to anyone

I walked to the counter where the pineapple sat 
And held it in my hands

As I carried it, I caught a reflection
That looked like a man carrying a head by it's hair

I carved the pineapple
And broadcast the carving live, on Instagram

It was risky, yet felt responsible
To use this opportunity to fill an end-of-the-long-tail content channel

I deleted the picture of my face
And broadcast instead a filtered and face shaped pineapple

To express stylized nostalgia 
And apathy towards identity

I received a notification that the delivery driver 
For the pineapple needed a tip

She got two dollars
And I got twenty-seven likes and a comment from a bot

Poems from my chapbook

Form Burn Step

© 2019 Jesse Blake Rundle

Reverend Sabertooth

the sabertooth
that roamed last didn't know it was alone

just knew that when it looked it didn't find
any other teeth that
were so sharp
against that orange

and reverend in the flesh

it talked to bored birds with
its gape and mane

and managed the foliage 
around tree 1753

gusting to whatever wasn't edible 
but should, perhaps, listen

on the last day the thought arose —
this is our last day as these kind of cats,
but our time was good —

and the birds will sing over not hearing our song anymore

Whistling on the hunt

shoot the whistle

I'll let it go 
and you follow

free the sonorant sky wavering
between the cold cattails 
with scraps and scraps
of lead

and crunching thunking thodding forth
splitting weeds —

and 
agape
the air

and 
agape
the deer

they are no longer cold
and searching
among many many layers

but hot and running

On a bike

god that sound

like a blackbird looking back
to find twenty blackbirds pushing more
than any imaginable air

sluicing ether like
it has edges everywhere and always —

but right above the ground — in the crouched, wingless hover

drop
push
squeeze

drop push squeeze

flame the pavement till it turns to dirt

Personal space

I had a feeling that I was in
my space
when your space
materialized
everywhere around me
as a voice
and a reason
and a body

Butterfly circling patterns

I was parallel lining you
over the edge of a large circle

And when the trees 
thinned

I could see your 
face

And you could see my 
eyes

And when a migration
of butterflies
went orthogonal to our paths 

We were
just barely connected 
from leaf to wing to leaf to wing
to leaf

And a layer of dust 
kicked up made up 
the last of the gaps 
between us

The lady singing

you'll never know dear
how the singing 
in my throat leaps out
in lumps like sugar
into this slippery cement tea

and skips across it while it soaks
into your bodies
because it's made of the same stuff as you

please don't take my sunshine
and ask it to be picturesque
and posie clad

it's here and shining now

however it falls 
from me
on whoever it finds

Salts

drama defiled an oyster
experience on the edge of a sea

salt from every side surrounding  —
crusty cocktail sauce salt

crab Dungeness is disappointing salt

thin lemon squeezed too much salt

Don Julio infused salt

talk humanely and without a grain of salt
about our separation
for unseen but understood reasons

let reasons detach from feelings
like the meat from the oyster’s shiny rock of a shell

and slide on salty lips that won't touch anything
else as soft for a while