Such Things Are Cyclical

This is our other big, fat, juicy Valentine for you today:  FIVE–count them–FIVE poems by Rich Larson, rising star. His novel “Devolution” was a finalist in the 2011 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award.  He also happens to be an avid participant in our fave YA writing community, Figment.  And people, he’s only 19!  We suspect you’ll be reading more of Rich in the years to come, and don’t forget you found him on YARN first.

Such Things Are Cyclical

By Rich Larson

Love

Photo courtesy of dgrice (flickr.com)

We’d have derivative adventures
Take cues from every sit-com
Scamper along a tired beach
Ogle long-deflowered stars
And revel in our shared hallucination

I’d start no copyright war
Over the Xerox in your head that is almost like me
But funnier, handsomer
With an unconstructed soul

And you’d claim no infringement
For the airbrushed picture I keep of us
That lets me pretend
Out of seven billion wanderers under the sun
You and I have something new

Down

I was drifting through the dark sky over your body
When you lured me to the neon cityscape of your lips.
I’m plunging now like
A badly planned suicide
A fire-and-forget munition
And I have no blue prints, no back-ups
My scattered body will not creep
Through the wreckage
To reassemble itself from anatomy texts.
I can dash myself against you only once.

Gravitational

Every time you shut your eyes, it’s a sin
You rob the world blind
Dropping a sooty curtain over
Distant dancing planetoids
So unearthly astronauts could not
Not in a thousand light-years
Ever touch them
But with such a pull that I always sink
Into your soft gravity well
       And become their satellite

Over

Image courtesy of Shira Golding (flickr.com)

You have murdered me here
Chalked my silhouette
Making a messy angel on the concrete
And put up police tape
THIS LINE, YOU HAVE CROSSED

When you leave the chalk is mine
To scrawl your name ad nauseum
Cracking my nails against granite
And all things immovable

Here on the fevered brink
My wish is for any part of you
So I could place skin against skin
And dissolve a little more warmly

The night sky has lost her mother
I can’t console the constellations we made together
Or tell the pallid stars where you have gone

Maybe she fled to this reflected city
Puddled here in the gutter
Where lies are truth and she could still love me

Valentine

Smooth red curves
Classical and incorrect
The card should show a veined potato
A throbbing fleshy lump
Nothing but anatomy and
Chemical reactions

Image courtesy of Rev Dan Catt (flickr.com)

The rose petals should be dollar bills
Affection costs a dozen
Cupid is a child soldier
Give him an AK-47

Ribbons should be spider’s webs
Frills should just be banned
The pretty white doves should shit
Like real birds do

The chocolate can stay.

Rich Larson is a 19-year-old student living in Edmonton, Alberta. His novel “Devolution” was selected as a finalist for the 2011 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. His work appears or is forthcoming in Word Riot, Prick of the Spindle, and The Claremont Review. When not writing, he is a productive member of society. More of his works can be found on Figment.