By: Damion Hamilton

Imagination

All the things that i have
All the things i have imagined

Those things can fill books movies
Netflix series

All these things i have imagined

You said and did but didn’t really didn’t do

But all those conversations and emotions

And situations

The laughter and the horror stories

The energy i put into them

And all those untrue things

And unreal things

All that time living in those worlds

I have killed myself with the

The snowflakes of imagination

And breathing in those worlds

I always like to make people smarter dumber
Than they really are

These Crazy Kids

They drive stupid and crazy and dangerous

In tinted windows, the expired plates, in suvs

With missing headlights, gone bumpers, hyundais and kias, chargers,
Fords, chryslers, hondas and nissans

They are in a hurry but in hurry for what?

To go home or to go to work?
To go to the dispensary, or the grocery store or eat Popeyes?

They drive their cars as if they were only worth twenty bucks

Or if they were all stolen

It’s dangerous and stupid the way that they drive
I tried to avoid them most of the time, but can’t

I’m getting older and not into driving fast

Even in my twenties I was not into that

I knew that it was nowhere to go worth killing yourself

Or wrecking your car, I had things I wanted to live for and see

But these kids and some middle aged folks just don’t care

Always these desperate brain dead people in streets

It is

What is

I Used to think

That i was too crazy to do this

Too fucked up to crazy too nervous

To artistic too gone

Too creative and gone

But look at me working a regular job

Waking up, eating breakfast, putting on clothes

Driving a car, i forgot shaving, i don’t nic myself up too much

When i was twenty five i hated this stuff, when i was in the warehouse
And long days. I would look at the rich young rappers and hate the world

Now, i tolerate it better

I go to work and do my thing, typing on the

Computer and data entry, sitting at a workstation

I used to think that i was too crazy and artistic

Fucked up and gone to do all of this
Regular stuff

And that i would have to make it as an artist
Or something or die and go crazy

But somehow, i work at work the breaks come fast

Or sometimes slow and minutes
And days go away

Without me melting entirely

somehow

It’s summer and flies

And the flies tear me apart

The work is done
And somehow I have stopped
Drinking alcohol

And the hotter it gets the worse the flies attack me

What is a fly?
And why do they care so little of themselves

I used to think so much

Now I am under a digital shroud
I used to burn so much
Now I feel a poetic imposter

I remember being twenty five over hundred degrees in a bombed out car with so much anger confusion and dread

I don’t want to go back to that place

As the the flies still attack me on this patio with my android phone

Thru

Moving thru the crowd
Thru the swarm of people
And thinking about destiny’s
And fates and those things
And I probably don’t what to know any of them to well
But I do feel a common interest even a mutual sympathy at times
Or perhaps because we our all
Live together and living and working and living and working and suffering all the time
Or thinking we know what we want
Or not knowing what we what
Or thinking it doesn’t matter much at all

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Damion Hamilton is from St. Louis MO. His poems have appeared in Chiron Review, Poesy Magazine, Zygote In My Coffee, Red Fez, The Camel Saloon and many others. He writes poetry, stories and novels. He has written several books. Available here.