been here now

 

I am wondering about

something.

 

why there is no girl next to me

sitting in the bathtub

like a wet mermaid.

 

just smiling and grinning

and grinning.

 

I am a poet,

I told them.

 

What What?

are you crazy?

screamed the leaves at me:

centuries of rotten present.

 

Yes Yes

I say,

but the pigs

and the shattered walnuts

don’t mind my existence

at all.

 

I walk

on the streets,

among the trees with

branches like hangman

in the wind.

 

laughing gladiolus, fish with wandered eyes,

legs made of anthills.

by God!

by God?!

 

this water is hot like

lava from the demon’s bath.

 

and the cop at the corner looks

at me angry,

touching his club.

 

by God.

about the roses and the dead

 

I sit at the edge of the time

I watch the river flowing slowly

like molasses with the fishes and

all the things inside that breathe

 

the people and the dogs and the flies

go in and then go out

of that tiny place that I exist within

and they tell me everything that I don’t

want to know

 

I watch the river I watch the river

the light

she is getting undressed

she is crying

I watch…

Bio: Peycho Kanev loves to listen to sad music while he drinks slowly his beer. His work has been published in Welter, The Catalonian Review, Off Beat Pulp, Nerve Cowboy, Chiron Review, Tonopah Review, Mad Swirl, Southern Ocean Review, The Houston Literary Review and many others.  He loves to put the word down and not talking on the cell phone  for days.  He is nominated for Pushcart Award and lives in Chicago.  His collaborative collection "r", containing poetry by him and Felino Soriano, as well as photography from Duane Locke and Edward Wells II is available at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/r-Peycho-Kanev/dp/0979129494/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1245429788&sr=1-1