Tapering Off

I was one of the travelers
drinking wine mixed with water,
piling herbs on hot stones
inhaling until I heard sirens—
how a failed prophet climbs
a mountain, tells the scattering birds
that God speaks through him, before walking
all the way back down.

Another Wasteland

I went from ditch to ditch
trying to convert the dirty writers, the half-bent
needles of another wasteland, where lightning
falls in circles and flowers carry with the wind
on hills we could pretend were Soria
creating art that overlooked the graves of our fathers.
I was one of them, and knew the right tracks
the right trains to hop, how in some parts
people cheer you on for the fight
but in places like these we are uncountable
while dying and invisible in death.
The winners say if you need to be convinced
then you don’t have it, but I think here
are all the writers dying for their art:
too late to learn anything else
too deep for shallow breath
and stuck in an endless line of mediocrity
what no-one has read
what no-one will likely ever read: still
something flashes when I am with them,
and when I am away from them
a tightening of the eyes lowering of the jaw
a scripture that makes all the rest
so unappealing: the darkness everywhere
the brief bits of light and a poem
that manages less than the pages
we worship and truthfully I never knew
where to take them I was the cult
leader of the passionately mediocre
so here I am thirty and I can hardly see
drunk all the time bracing heads
of the almost as they capitulate
to seizures unable to stop
writing unable to stop dying
and I am unable to stop finding beauty
in their struggle
which is mine.

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Brandon Shane is a poet and horticulturist, born in Yokosuka, Japan. You can see his work in Rattle, trampset, Variant Lit, The Chiron Review, Stone Circle Review, IceFloe Press, The Marrow Poetry, One Art Poetry, Sontag Mag, Heimat Review, among others. He graduated from Cal State Long Beach with a degree in English. Find him on Twitter @HalfTheLobster