Free Verse Poetry from Steven Christou
Just Two Guys, Dudes, Real
Strong Masculine Fellas
Six legs left and he’s a he
with those balls near his
‘fangs’. A daddy long legs,
his web in one of my room’s corners near the
ground – scrunched and untidy and ugly;
a great work of modern art.
I feed him ants
bugs
and his ass darkens,
balloons,
a rice grain to a marble.
I left for a few days
came back
and
today I placed a nice thick jittery cricket
in his home and he
looked at me like I was some kind of idiot. And I am I am.
A female spider, please
he said
and I told him
if only
and like lightning he struck the cricket
who by this point had untethered most of the spider’s
untidy home and balls and fangs and spirit and mind
and delivered the glorious kill shot;
the cricket finally quiet, dead, tolerable,
his insides a vile soup
as I made myself a coffee
as the spider up and left
without his soup.
Circus
It’s page after page after
page
with these poets.
A Sunday;
Warm air,
Towels folded,
The sink self-drying,
Or, rather, the sun assisting,
The cat in a sleep neighbouring death,
A co-ordinated mess of books spilling from the coffee table
to the floor,
and outside
fathers and sons
fathers and sons.
I read Williams
and I try
to understand
Williams.
Every two months
I go back to Williams
and I try to understand
Williams.
Drums
Synths
Harmonies
fuck on the page
and I lose my place;
then the way she would say
hi
after I kissed her forehead
joins the orgy.
It’s page after page after
page
with this circus.
Dance Class
It's nice, though;
tailored to our feet,
the ground moves
so our feet don’t
so we don’t
so we don’t.
We spin, fall, we spin, talk too much,
and end up where we started,
which, frankly, is nowhere
all that interesting.
Ah, ‘interesting’,
a non-word
that we’ve let slide on through
and through.
Anyhow.
This dance – whilst loose! – has a few rules:
please. follow them.
Soften
the corners,
the turns,
smooth them over,
(if you can, please stick to circles! they’re safer)
and never under
any (most) circumstances
move in unison
with that sort of strange
love motion,
that love dance muck,
with that sort of strange
verisimilitude.
TO SUMMARISE:
when you can,
start over,
when you can’t,
start over,
and when you aren’t sure,
stop.
‘Okay,
but what should it actually feel like?’
She took my left hand with
Her right
And with her left
My right. She spun me all over the place
And she was deceptively stiff
Blasé
Her feet married to the ground
As I ricocheted off the fucking moon.
I watched
And studied
And in my head,
Prayed to a god I don’t believe in,
Thanking Her,
Crater marks on my ribs
And the American flag up my ass.
Let’s do this again!
You can find more from Steven over on Instagram!
