dampness
Other books by Jasen Sousa
Poetry:
Life, Weather
A Thought and a Tear for Every Day of the Year
Close Your Eyes and Dream With Me
Almost Forever
A Mosaic of My Mind
17-24: Selected Poems of Jasen Sousa
Humming Eternity
Somewhere Lost
Fiction:
Fancy Girl
dampness
jasen sousa
Special thanks to Rebecca Van Horn
for poem editing and sequence assistance
A J-Rock Book
Somerville+Boston+Worldwide
dampness
Copyright © 2014 by Jasen Sousa
Copyright © All Rights Reserved by J-Rock Publishing
Editing by Rebecca Van Horn
Photographs by Alex Foster
Book Design by Alex Foster and Jasen Sousa
J-Rock Publishing and Dime Designz
In affiliation with Eudimeonia Entertainment
All rights reserved under international and Pan-American copyright conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form, electronic, mechanical, or by any other means, without written permission of the author.
Address all inquiries to :
J-Rock Publishing
45 Francesca Avenue
Somerville, MA 02144
Library of Congress
Cataloging in Publication Data
ISBN 978-0-9853359-9-1
eBook ISBN 978-0-9853359-8-4
Manufactured in The United States of America
Printed in Somerville, Massachusetts
In Memory
of
Ann C. Mento
Alex Foster
Tom Westcott
Author’s Note:
Dampness was a difficult collection of poems for me to compile and complete. They took place during a period in my life when I lost two long-time neighborhood friends and felt creatively dead. Writing has always been a source of therapy for me, so instead of using excuses of why I could not write or not find the perfect words, I decided to walk through the mud in order to find some type of stable land in my life, and in my creative universe.
I hope that you, the reader, are able to take something away from these poetic experiences and remember that being in a bad space does not mean that you have to stand still. Move with me in thought and motion to a place where creativity, inspiration, and hope can once again be familiar to all of us.
Peace,
Jasen Sousa
FORGOTTEN POCKETS
Puddles and other places
I am seen throughout the day, stranger
to the world and to myself. A portion
of my being slowly evaporates underneath
Weeping Willows and AC’s that droop
out of 3rd floor windows. I walk past a park
in the middle of July and watch
balls fly, there is no place that kids have to be.
Reminders of intruders
who party on the balcony of my conscience.
I carry a lot with me in different compartments,
but it is the items I have left inside of forgotten pockets
that I desire to reintroduce to my fingertips.
Falling out of my dreams, parachutes
containing incomplete goals imagined
on dim-lit days. My toes yearning to be comfortable
inside damp, disfigured boots. My previous success
is an equation I can no longer compute.
I walk swiftly past store windows to avoid eye
contact with the man no longer intact, the man
in black, black backpack, black hat, swallowing
a black...gun. Future memories blown out the back
landing in cracks where the sidewalk and street meet, until
a machine comes by and sweeps them away.
Roofers that quit and didn’t take the ladder down. Good kid,
madder now, scowl, molded angry brow because there are forces
which will not allow the man I witness throughout the day
to be present now.
WALLS
756 square feet
of new space
I have never slept in.
Windows are shut
to keep rain from damaging
my bamboo floors.
The smell of new paint
covers me like the sheet
that drapes over one leg, July heat.
Everything in here is foreign, I have trouble
sleeping, surrounded by walls that will never know me
as much as I will get to know them.
I try to sleep in my new place
longing for old
comfort.
A bookcase full of magnetic voices
that call to my metal brain, wanting me to read
them all at once.
Voices of wisdom, despair, try to get me
to do something
I don’t want to do, be.
I am kept company by a single LED light
that lets me see
what I’m writing, while I try
and ignore what I’m thinking.
CRUMBS
A bed of