Keegan Lester / Two Poems

Psalm for Prodigal child while Away

Take your eraser to the sky.

Smudge away

So the stars can break through again.

All of the airplanes and rain clouds

Are waiting on your hands.

Go ahead. I won’t tell no one.

No matter how far you run,

The smog and city light

Clinging your precious DNA

Will haunt you. The bodies

Of people that seem familiar,

From a past life, will haunt you too.

According to the rules,

You’re allowed to fall in love

Once or twice. After that,

It’s just chasing old ghosts

In new people. Once changed,

You aren’t allowed back into the world

Through the eyes you once possessed.

These are the rules.

Don’t look at me like that.

I didn’t make the rules up.

The moon is puddling in the salt water like ice cream.

Everything is becoming muddled by something else

By which I mean made more beautiful.

Our form is a hodgepodge of bruises and light.

I’ve been warned of my naïveté,

But tell me there’s someone left who hasn’t forgotten me.

The me, me.

What I remember are dreams. The lightning

Bugs nestled between the rib bone in my chest. They glow

In your chest too.