For your enjoyment: “In Bed at 4 a.m.” by Zebulon Huset
Yeah, I just decided, after looking around at other blogs, that it wouldn’t be entirely uncalled for to post a few of my own poems, as long as I don’t preoccupy the blog with them. In fact it seems like people like to be able to see the blogger isn’t a complete hack (I claim only 42% hack), so here is a poem that appeared in the Spring 2007 Roanoke Review. Enjoy! (or else)
In Bed at 4am
by Zebulon Huset
Lying face down on my waterbed,
I imagine that I am a corpse on the river.
Any river, as long as it’s slow, and viciously polluted,
the mucous foam being the spandex-microbead pillow
clenched tightly between my knees,
and the current rippling under me with every limb-twitch.
The distension in my stomach is from trapped methane,
and not the oversized portion of spaghetti.
The soft whirring of my shitake-looking
oscillating fan is the noise of birds
fighting to be the first to pick my bones clean.
With my eyes closed I can imagine this
and I can picture the small details—
the insects climbing the reeds by shore,
each with their own little mission to accomplish,
all for the same greater goal of survival—
the cumulonimbus clouds behind my head,
waiting to drop their hydro-burden on the city,
Boston or Minneapolis or St. Louis. It doesn’t matter.
The rain will come and cop cars will splash the water
in the streets like Moses’ parting Broadway,
and in their wake will follow the chosen yellow cabs.
These thoughts help me sleep, induce the coma
of REM, where I can dream of happy things,
though I hardly ever do. Dreams slip from me
like days when nothing bad happens, beads of water,
but the nightmares, those are more like honey:
that sickening sweetness that draws insects like
a crystalline messiah, like a bloated corpse run aground
of the dirty river quietly slipping out of town.