Terrestrial Bliss

 

Heaven is a two-concourse parkway, I know,

I saw it through the glare rising off the parking lot asphalt

And also the glare bouncing off every window

From buildings in the office park or the cars still between the lines


You can keep your clouds and your holy mountains,

You can keep your sacred rivers,

And your celestial kingdoms full of compliant spirit wives,

I saw heaven and it was better than your domains

 

The concourse was clean and the sides were free

Of broken bottles and empty cans,

The grass was green too, and I did not have to cut it,

Some angel must have, because heaven was empty except for me

 

What I’m Doing with My Life Right Now

 

The garden is open now.  Yeah, it was a pleasant office to write withdrawal letters in. Afterwards I kept trying to train my mind on Golgotha. We need to encourage students to engage in healthier activities, like music snob insult time.  I wonder if they will want to encourage students if Kanye becomes president. I take for my guru, Walt Whitman, the bearded father of mistaken Russians.

 

Digging the music of the detritus of my theater career. In addition to the basic html version, caulk your wagon to get across a Coen Brothers movie. I want to save children, but I’m afraid to stop applying to work.  Living simultaneously on print and Carmen Sandiego. This isn’t my most embarrassing interaction with a brief stopover in Leviticus. NYC peeps, need housing again.

 

In addition to being a flaneur and raconteur, I shave over breakfast stromboli. Bed at 10, sleep till 2, toss till 6, rise, rinse, wash, repeat, wake, shake, and go to the Ishtar gate at the doctor’s office to ask him to take a toll on me. Going to be someone new and at a beach during sunset to boot, all while holding a bottomless mimosa on my phone and trying to make private motions.

 

Oh hey, I found my mother is hot, Szechuan hot. Not so bright, I got a chance with Bernie Sanders. I could make my username Omar Serif. Why is Pelosi still a thing? I’ve had enough trouble trying to train my peers. To hell with lifetime warranties? Yeah. I was in a pleasant office.  Maybe it can hold ice cubes now. My shadow and I are in an open relationship.

 

The Baron of Ditmas Park

 

Through a fire escape, I escaped

from you all, I forgave you all

now forgive me for the disappearing act,

not dead, very much alive

among the peeling branches,

playing Adam and Eve and snaking around

in the garden of genesis you ignore

crisscrossing above you

and your anglophile argyle streets,

don’t worry about the fall, focus on roots,

make sure none of these towers

trembles or collapses

because you have choked them

with an overdose of concrete,

go ahead, ask the authorities about how

I got up here and they will lie

to you with their expertise,

claiming I’m armed to the teeth,

perhaps with butterflies and bowties al dente,

no, all I’ve got is a bark

that leaves its trace on the ground

and is good enough not to follow me,

all because one night

I refused to eat life at a snail’s pace,

and went barren into the trees instead

 

Ben Nardolilli currently lives in New York City. His work has appeared in Perigee Magazine, Red Fez, One Ghana One Voice, Caper Literary Journal, Quail Bell Magazine, Elimae, fwriction, Grey Sparrow Journal, Pear Noir, Rabbit Catastrophe Review, and THEMA. His chapbook Common Symptoms of an Enduring Chill Explained, has been published by Folded Word Press. He blogs at mirrorsponge.blogspot.com and is looking to publish a novel.