Poetry by Gabriel Sauers

POETRY BY GABRIEL SAUERS

“Aunt Babe"
I am as real as they come
in this night hour watching
simulation
I have gnashed bones to make my bread
like some norwegian troll
fingers dirty as the women on hennepin avenue in minneapolis
in this dimension
this deviation from the time line
my people all die
they walk into the ocean
the abyss
the heart of the mundane man
whatever imagery conveys
that they drown in time
mouths flapping and teeth being licked
in skin like elephant memories
I’m not sure about your people
be they ghosts
or aliens
I’m not sure if my words go out like radio signals
across space and time
like a dodgers game they may go careening through dimensions
or bounce off of Saturn
but my people die
and they go to some bleak stone sodden place
picked cleaner of happiness
than even this low belly plain of existence
I have wed the fields of wheat
that are winter barren
just stalks poking up out of the dirt
like razor clams out of the beach
I wed the fields one night when I was uh rambling
from place to face
ruminating about things like
My great aunt babe
who didn’t know I was there
every time I went to see her with my brother
she would ask who his friend was
as she dragged an oxygen tank
from ensure can to ensure can
she smoked all the way to the end of the line
until one night she rattled
on a platform full of banshee wails
and cat eyed formless strangers
and walked into the smoke she spent her time breathing
her daughter cooked meth in her house
she had a red face one time when I was a kid
burns from stealing anhydrous
from some farmer or another
at least that’s what my dad said
when I asked what was up with it
Her name was sue
and she sold babe’s house when she died
Babe was decent
I still miss her when I smell cigarette smoke
I still like that smell
it gets in my clothes like she got in my head
before she walked into the nicotine stains on her walls
and disappeared into the haze of her daughters face


"The Whole Shebang, America Did Us Dirty"
its 2:35 A.M.
I need keystone beer
but I have Hamm’s
which isn’t the same
it’s a cheap substitute
for a cheap substitute
just like slow living is a cheap substitute
for the danger
of wheels over asphalt
I need a keystone
I have to have one
I hurt
from all of the time
in between time
the air lost between breaths
where the people move
like fisher price little people in the hands
of a two year old
aimless like a gun in the hands of an old lady
going off on whatever it sets its iron sights upon
my groin aches
my arms ache
my back hurts
like the last things that my soulmate said
with sanguine merlot bags
packed under her eyes
as she walked out the door
my weightlifting is driving me into the graveyard physically
but I can’t and won’t stop
I am the man who lifted the moon from behind garbage cans
on oceanshore boulevard
and placed it in the sky when it fell
in a depression
or maybe it jumped
from the
clouds like skyscrapers
I don’t know I am just glad it lived
so I don’t bring it up
though now its wings are crimped
and there is fog round it on strange
october nights
when it burns like a jalapeno in throat
I have heart palpitations
I don’t sleep
sometimes I can feel the earth under me
and I know that out there in the dark
is a time when it will feel me under it
out there a sparrow calls
collect
because it can’t pay with change
it calls across foliage top
that in the light of the moon shines
like fillings and tin foil
foliage that reaches for a sun that might not come back
the call echoes and rings
a single note
of clear warbling pain
that I feel
and what do you say when it hurts?
Ow
I say Ow to the night
I say Ow to the person I was and the one I am instead
I say Ow to the years
And I need another keystone
before I need a headstone
I drink the malty
bready can of novocaine for
my aching
twisted soul
If my soul were my legs
I’d be chair bound
I have seen C-beams
I have seen unattainable dreams
and I have felt the passing of my youth
through a needle eye
that separated me from suicide and cell
I came that close
to being gone
I drink in the dark
and that sparrow barks

"The Reveries of The Ammonia Leaking Brain"
My girlfriends dad drank for around 40 years
I say around 40 because he has been drinking long before my 31 years began
just drinking and drinking
like a fish trying to intake air while out of water
then one day he started to shit himself
more often
he started to open his mouth and make faces
in the living room during the day time
like he could no longer comprehend the waking horror that
is living in a suit made of meat
and there was no one in his head
not even a brain drowning in alcoholism
his wife who had put up with this shit for 40 years
but not put a stop to it
after much prodding from myself and my girlfriend
she took him to e.r. where he almost died
and his son who drinks till he pisses himself
on a couch covered in trash and old piss and shit stains
in the living room of their house every night
just kicked it up a notch and drank even more in his fathers absence
no more football game arguments here
he probably thought
if he is capable of thought
I am genuinely not sure
but as his dad lay dying in a hospital bed
I could hear the chirp of beer cans opening all night
his mother would tell him not to drink in the house
to stop drinking over and over while his dad was in the hospital
but he would just tell her off and continue
when his dad came home he hid the beer in his car and would go outside
to shotgun beer after beer in the dark
while he was in the hospital
my girlfriends dad had his veins tied off in his throat
because they were close to bursting
from being worn down by the drinking
her mom told us about it then talked to her brother about it
they laughed about it on the couch
laughed in a mountain of trash about the fathers suffering
now if he died I would have been happy I won’t lie about that
but he isn’t my father nor is he my husband
and the living room chat was the kind of madness
that occurs when a schizophrenic stops their medicine and then shoots up a mall or school
just for the sake of wanting to die in during the shooting
her dad came back a few days later but his brain didn’t
his hair fell off
he stopped talking much
and slept and slept and slept
he shit himself and didn’t clean himself
and he was taken back to the hospital
they gave him diapers and told him he had an ammonia leak in his brain
because his liver wasn’t removing it like it should
that he might in a years time get a little better
might with a capital M
the brother keeps drinking
and now the father looks at me
smiles like some grim butcher shop worker
asks me dull questions about dull things
while I dance the mundane mambo and wait
to die myself
he drools from spot to spot
sometimes his gut is out
sometimes his ass is shit
and I play games about space exploration
where I am, some hero
that I am not in life
while waiting for my own innards to mush
like oatmeal being turned over with a spoon
and accepting that
shitting yourself
while your brain
melts is probably better than
the rest of this
I fuck
I  day dream of fucking
and I watch myself grow old
and this is it
life in this pile of trash and shit
these are the reveries of the ammonia leaking brain

My name is Gabriel I go by Boo, I am 31, disabled and one of two middle children of six, I have never been published but I would like to say Hi, Mom!