Speakeasy

Home // Julian Morelli // Poetry and Writing

[speakeasykeepsakes]

My Side of Crescent City

I live in a world of heights

where the first thing I see

is the ground.

Preservation Hall swings

and swings around

in this dizzying

Holy Crescent City.

Mr. Smith puts down his trumpet

and takes pity

and sings directly for me

to calm down.

The masks in this town

stretch far beneath

one’s eyes,

far beyond

goodbyes.

But Mr. Johnson trills on...

Thrills on his sax

and worsens my attacks.

Why did I act

on my own?

Deprave,

I am drowned.

I live in a world of heights,

where the first thing I crave

is the ground.

[speakeasykeepsakes]

This must be how it feels to be like everyone else, devoid of motivation, worth, and romance. It isn’t what is wrong with me, it’s what’s wrong that makes myself forever perfect in this spinning, self-locked trance.

[speakeasykeepsakes]

I cannot force these words to sound as beautiful as I know they could. So I’ll just watch the world fall and lament and wish I could describe it as eloquently as when you told me you were glad to see me.

[speakeasykeepsakes]

Forceful

I could write about rain, but I've never been soaked. I could write about love, but I've never been close. I could write about panic, but not about the attacks, or about how I'm leaving, but I'll always be back.

I could write about suns I've never seen set or how the time that we've spent makes me smile at best. How the stars aren't as bright as I want them to be, how the brighter the moon the less stars you could see.

I could write about chests and how mine is devoid, my heartbeat's delusive, but my ribs are destroyed from a pounding so forceful born deep in the black. On most days, I promise, I hear my ribs crack.

I could write about eyes and the way that yours plead, how the rest of my life means nothing to me. I could run from the rain, but it's time I feel soaked. I could write what I feel, tremendous and real, but I'd most rather sulk and be soaked.

[speakeasykeepsakes]

Beat

The internet waxes emotion you never had the opportunity to feel for people you never met and gifts forlornly a split second of loneliness that dwells long past your eyes in your throat.

[speakeasykeepsakes]

Longing

All that strikes us with beauty are always so far out of reach, yet here you stand in front of me tempting these words out from my teeth. The moon I will feel sooner than your lips pressed up to mine. I will own the sea entirely before our fingers intertwine. The horizon I could grasp with my feet behind any shoreline, I could bottle the sounds of crashing waves, but for your heart I’ll only pine. Your eyes must be infinitely far from where I stand tonight, as their beauty trumps the finest star, and you shine just as bright.

[speakeasykeepsakes]

Metal Fish Sculpture

A one-thousand pound metal fish  hangs directly over my walk to the bus every morning.  I used to walk around it because of you,  but now I'm thinking  it may not be such a bad way to go.  Even on windy days, I pass directly under it.  For if it falls, like I did for you, it will damage itself more  than it ever will me.  There are still mornings I choose to walk around that fish, but that's almost more irresponsible  than standing directly under it  and waiting, hoping, praying, for it to fall. 

[speakeasykeepsakes]

Bloom

I’d never need paper again if you would just be mine. My fingers would etch verses down the skin along your spine. My words would fill your beauty with the beauty I see inside. The ink would sink down to your bones and carve itself on your insides.

These words will grow to transcend death and I’ve planted seeds in you, so when you die flowers of you will forever be in bloom.

[speakeasykeepsakes]

Panic

I am fitfully panicking from the eternal attack of the stench of everyone’s vanity.

No longer can I watch us bleed from our throats as we scream for the attention of all of humanity.

Peel open your eyelids and you’ll see without strain that you’re rotting away your anatomy, aeons before your casket is lowered and your muscles are eaten by atrophy.

I am fighting against this insanity. A catastrophe has deemed us the generation of vanity.

I foolishly thought I could escape in her eyes, once emphatically filled to the brim with veracity.

She now dresses in black, as depression’s in style. Her now constant worst fear is banality.

What pains me the most is as they decompose, the vain will bequeath to their daughters and sons, that without recognition they’re worthless but to a mortician, yet I will live happily on.

[speakeasykeepsakes]

Soaked

I told you of this pen and pad that writes even in the rain. I waited days to try it out for you, but it was sunny everyday.  Then you told me we should say goodbye and it rained that very night, so I stayed outside and scribbled down how alone I felt inside.  No busses go downtown on Sunday nights and I don’t drive. My key has not worked once this week and tonight was no surprise.  Although the rain's soaked through my clothes, my writing remains dry.  As I will be eventually,  if I could ever get inside. 

[speakeasykeepsakes]

Wonder

It scares me that people

find love.

I wonder how many

just settle.

I don’t want to end life

alone.

I wonder just how many

do.

I wonder how many

choose not

to settle 

and end up alone

in effect.

I wonder which one 

I will be.

I wonder if I’ll ever be

happy.

Maybe I’ll never

find love.

Or maybe I’ll never

just settle.

But the fear of both roads

soaks deep into my bones

cus in both ways 

I end up

alone.

[speakeasykeepsakes]

Forever and

    ever

we will spin.

[speakeasykeepsakes]

ill never see 

     the stars without

  thinking of you.

[speakeasykeepsakes]

I could see 

    your smile

  from the moonlight.  

[speakeasykeepsakes]

Not even the rain could

     surround me the same

  as the intoxicating allure of your breath.

[speakeasykeepsakes]

Looking at the stars

      all night

  has made me very lonely.

[speakeasykeepsakes]

into my bones and in my mind

As the days slur together I find myself sighing harder and deeper. The worst part about it is there's no defendable reason for my sighs. I have an existence that must be more comfortable than the majority of people alive, a seemingly beautiful life that herds of people would claw and bleed and die for, yet these sighs seep so god damned deep into my bones and in my mind. They infect every thought and dream and cell in my body. Nothing in life will kill me quicker than the slash and burn invasion surging through my blood like these hard, deep sighs.