#chris kessler

[gebo4482]

Project Hail Mary

Artist: Glyn Dillon, Chris Kessler, Kris Anka

[gebo4482]

Project Hail Mary

Artist: Chris Kessler, Bob Cheshire, Chris Rosewarne

[shivanigogna]

Boating on Lake Union :) pit stop for dranks

[chriskessler]

Beginning of one. (Back on Main St.)

Just give me a sugar-shine button to remember you by. Pop it off your collar, right next to your neck. I'll slip it into my chest pocket, pat it safe, slip my thumbs in my belt, whistle all the way home.

Did you know that every piece of wind that slips down your shoulder brushes times come and gone heavy on your skin? Today's breeze is a slack-jawed, nappin' in the noonday Sunday sun kinda breeze. Been blowin' 'round here since '22, bet you.

Over on Maiden Lane, there's an ice cream shop that sells cones as big as you can hold. Come next week, I'll take you there. Hop on my handle bars. Let me do all the pedaling. You can hear the Great Bambino clickin' along in the spokes.

–– Chris Kessler

[chriskessler]

My Bedroom is a Brown Couch

In the living room is a tower of shoes. Some of yours are there, and mine, more mine than yours. Your boots remind me of sunsets in the shoulder-neck crooks of highways, and the coffee we drank into early dusks there.

Tonight, my bedroom is a brown couch. My legs are too long for it, my feet too wanting to stretch, and the bent-broken twist of my trunk is desperate to loose its knots on something flat and soft.

In the inner room is a sickness, the walls feel it and have begun to wither. The bedthings, your clothes and mine, more mine than yours, have shrunk back and away from the darkest corner. There is no window to allow the sun to love it.

I have saved the books. Perhaps they will forgive me now for neglecting them for far too long. The yellow bookshelf is being nursed back to health. It has gulped down too much Fincastle air to be brought low so soon.

You are at home, more alone than just because you are not with me. You are so tired of the miles between us, and haven't looked at the stars in months. There is an engine in your heart, and your bones are made of whatever it is that makes us look at the best in things.

There is a bed that misses our weight and the way I can't fall asleep without holding your hand. My love, there is a home, somewhere past July, waiting for us to summer in it.

You can rest there, I promise, you can rest. There is a bed in a loft, just down the street, daydreaming of you and I making breakfast after making love.

Tonight, my bedroom is a brown couch and the inner room of this apartment is molding at the corners. But, there is a window above my head and a home somewhere past sweet June,

where you and I will drink coffee on a balcony and laugh and talk into early dusk. Come August, we'll leave the glass door open all night long.

--Chris Kessler

[chriskessler]

My Love, the Worldshaker

Most times, you are the shock, the shaking of my feet, the floor-rattle- wall-shudder of something amazing. Most times I cannot tell it is coming until I am knocked flat into unconscious grinning and corner eyed tears from nothing in particular… Except

that you are the tremor, the shockwave wall of debris, never the bomb, never so violent as that, but you touch my heart with such furious fervor that I cannot stand.

You do not make me weak-kneed, you make the ground itself bend and buckle. No one shakes the world like you do.

Perhaps I stopped writing you poems because I was still getting to my feet. Perhaps I should start again, even though the pen slips.

- Chris Kessler

[chriskessler]

An Anniversary of Sorts

I

•

Summer made a wild

thing of you, letting you loose

and teaching you how to forget

just enough.

•

She left you your name,

two coke crates, and an idea

of what home might be, and

what it most certainly is not –

•

coarse and bitter, damp-shoed

and lonely from walking, half sober,

through empty streets, past stop signs

and swing sets, onto a cold couch

outside a locked bedroom door.

•

II

•

Winter made a bed of this town,

came knocking at the door

when you least expected it,

tucked you in tight.

•

III

•

This one is autumn-apple red – crisp

like waking to a morning, frozen,

wrapped in bedthings and dreaming's

perfume. This one is morning sun

through morning fog… she is

•

the arms of waking, the taste

of pine on your tongue in an early,

empty world.

•

She is coffee, you, a step ladder,

she needs you to reach the sugar,

she cannot taste this sweetness without

you.

•

IV

•

two pairs of shoes

one jacket

one dress

two books

three bracelets

two sweaters

one skirt

three necklaces

two earrings

•

V

•

Oh what humble museums we are,

what dancing lamplight these seasons be.

•

-- Chris Kessler

[chriskessler]

My poem, "I Used to Collect Bottles Full of Bees."

More poetry videos: youtube.com/agreatperhaps