ON THE SUBJECT OF NOSTALGIA

Joseph Lee Meads

Forgiven: this: the sincerity 
of all my dead spermatozoa: 
lined up, one by one by one, 
under a swell of stifling sun 
in the wild of our hinterland.

To smuggle into / out of: 
black and white motives, 
algorithms of the ulterior, 
the pangs of war or sport 
and our earth’s harsh spin.

That’s blood money on my purse, penknife, and rope. 
That’s bloodied money frothing from my nose holes;
waiting meekly for the soft gulping of the humanistic
warmth of clots: as juxtaposed to the naïve & obtuse 
transgressions: like the breaking of a curfew or tooth.

▪

Forgotten: this: my Hippocratic Oath;
as well as what I said when I said: no.

▪

Forgotten: the names of lovers past;
my cripplingly outdated dementia praecox. 
Forgiven: the weight of the gravity of laughter.

▪

All the women of all my dad’s pornos –
VHS’d & assumed shattered; forever exhausted: 
yet immortal; aloft in TV static, as glue.

▪

And it was I who was that arsonist
setting ablaze your museum of sentiments; 
because they’re all so fucking lame.

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Joseph Lee Meads is a diagnosed schizophrenic and currently an MA student in the Program for Writers at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He has previously been published in Columbia Poetry Review, Chicago Literati, Lover's Eye Press and elsewhere. He posts images of his muted television onto Instagram: @joseph.lee.m