Poetry from Noah Berlatsky

I Don’t Trust Spring

I don’t trust spring so I wore my winter coat
And now I am too warm thanks to duplicitous spring.
Fate moves too quickly for me
Like the important email I am waiting for which will not arrive,
But in reverse.
The world is too fast for me
Or possibly too slow.
The joggers are not over dressed
The trees sprout leaves in just the right amounts.
But I am left out of the season
Like an email which will not arrive.
Like an email which will not arrive 
I should go to sleep in my coat
And dream of the bare arms of winter.
And dream of the bare arms of winter.
And dream of the bare arms of winter.
I don’t know what comes next.

 
Revolutionary Song

There’s a great pale beetle in the brain of James Madison.
It crawls through his buttocks onto the cheese plate of Benjamin Franklin.
Cheese bounces like rubber upon the fiery honor of Alexander Hamilton.
The narrative journey wears the green plaid socks of George Washington.

Do not doubt it; do not doubt it.
History will swallow you if you doubt it.
We have found a fearless squid writing fearful poems in its ink sac
and they all say do not doubt it.

Thomas Jefferson winds up his wooden teeth
and they chew upon the wretched fungus in the eye of compromise.
In Paris they sing to the great wigs
marching on the cloudy rhetoric of Thomas Jefferson.

The ink sac is dry; the doubt drips like chicken soup
into the soul of the brain of the heart.
The origins of cryptids rise from tea like terror
and Patrick Henry holds a frisbee between his gleaming gums.

Every toss is a vote for truth.
Every miss is a vote for death.
The country stands strong as the pudding
that leaks from Daniel Webster’s forehead.

Do not doubt it; do not fear the porcine call
Of gregarious egregious sand worms in the stall.
JFK and LBJ come drifting down like fall.
Praise until you doubt it but don’t doubt it.