TEXT poetry

Aaron Chapman

Here I am: all yours and naked.
Carpet burns across my body
from the journey to a different person.

I keep my cold fire close,
and a packet of wandering Camels.[1]

I take a chainsaw to pleasures
in the pathless woods.[2] One tree
to make a poem, which makes Bukowski
guilty of deforestation. Perhaps I’m the same.

Months of drafts and white confetti
add years on lungs and liver.

Decades as the heart’s interpreter
for a decent couplet, or tercet
in a page’s corner, that easily fits
on fallen leaves, or biopsy samples
confirming my poet’s death.

Compose a eulogy from a fugue of letters
that begin with the word Unfortunately…

1. Billy Collins – Love in the Sahara return to text
2. Lord Byron – There is Pleasure in the Pathless Woods return to text

Aaron Chapman was born in Indonesia and lives in Australia, where he's completing a BA majoring in Creative Writing and Literature at Griffith University. He writes freelance for surf magazines.