7
Ballast
Today inside the small room with
the mahogany door I will learn to
imagine my worries into a pickle jar
while placing them on a shelf in a corner.
A mental ruse designed to stave off
the vertigo of nightmares and heartburn.
I will learn how the faint perfume of
green apples and lavender can magically
invite me into sleep's respite once again.
But for now I watch and listen
as the names dwindle down. Cozied up like
lovers with the newly tenured miscreant,
the drug addict and the insomniac holding
their blackened hearts like stillborn babies.
Our eyes, with nowhere else to go but out
the large window, ferris-wheeling up the
exposed skeleton of a high-rise. Babel's
latest heaven bound tower slowly
becoming Monday's new midlife crisis.
Following each airborne ballast, hypnotically
swaying over a jagged and fickle city, each
crimson colored girder hoisted up becomes
a rafter lodged in the mind's wide open eye.
Billy Burgos is an illustrator / designer from Los Angeles, CA. His poetry has been featured at many local L.A. venues including the Worldstage and Beyond Baroque. He was recently featured in the Newer Poets Reading sponsored by the L.A. poetry festival at the Central Library. He serves as a curator on GotPoetry.com and his first full length is due this year on Deadbeat press.
