Poetry By Luke Welch

Luke Welch is currently incarnated as a nerdy, middle-aged, white guy in Rochelle, IL. If he behaves he's sure he can incarnate as someone or something cooler in his next life. Some of his poems will be appearing in the upcoming premier issue of Gemstone Piano Review.

Learning to Fly

If it's meant to be 

it will happen.  

If it's not

then the universe has other plans.

The girl doesn't call you back.

Someone else gets the job.

The hurt bird you found in your path

is supposed to tell you something.

Take it home and learn to care for it.

It may be your own wing that needs to heal.

And someday the bird may teach you to fly.

You would have missed that opportunity

working under a mountain.

And your soul love waits,

soaring in the clouds

in the sky over the sea.

***

Corpse Eaters

When the paper pyramid of capitalism

burns at last

and the richest among us

have fled to their bunkers

then we are free.

Stores empty. 

Gas tanks.

Pharmacies.

It will be hard at first.

We think we need these things.

But they are addictions.

All around us the Earth

provides all we need.

All we have to do is say 

Yes.

The once-rich, shivering under ground,

will imagine us eating each-other up here.

They'll send up drones and watch

and be astonished to see us

working together in gardens,

gathering at night to sing

of the dark times,

when we lived as zombies

in the thrall of vampires.

***

It's Over Now

I've broken the last heart.

Left the last house burning.

I'm alone in the world.

I'm the main character in a story

that no-one wants to read.

The crow laughs in the tree.

The clouds pass over

like empty pages.

The days go by like an old man

walking circles in the park.

I stop for a moment,

feel the sun kiss my face.

Is that it, finally?

The love I've been looking for

all these long years?

***

Worthless

Once everyone knows

you're a liar and a cheat,

and you've lost your job

and your spouse or girlfriend or boyfriend

or all of them at once.

When everyone knows your degrees are just paper

and even your smiles are photo-shopped,

then there's nothing to do but be yourself,

as wretched as that is.

You could haul your worthless ass

to the curb with the garbage

or you could start over,

admit you're shit

and see where it takes you.

There are a lot of people

the world has given up on.

Maybe you can organize them,

demand equal rights for fuck-ups.

You can form your own voting block

and get political candidates

to drive down in their fancy cars

to give speeches to win your votes.

They'll fit in well.  Hell,

every one of them

is just a liar and a cheat

waiting to be discovered.

***

Assholes

At the Garden of the Gods National Park,

where gods are planted,

grown, pruned, and brought to fruit,

I am sitting atop a cliff

watching the sun go down

over three thousand acres of pristine forest.

I'm in ecstatic reverie

when some younger people take the next rock over.

Pretty soon they're talking, quite seriously,

about bungholes,

how no two are alike,

how they pucker like a mouth,

like a flower, waiting to open,

and I can't help but listen with great interest.

Humanity!

Each of us stretches

from the mud beneath our feet

to the heavens, just above our heads.

Only we can recognize

the divinity in a neighbors' asshole

while the sun sets in glorious display,

as around us, young gods

bloom like flowers on the rocks.