Waxing, Waning by Enoch Thompson

Waves,

curving, beautiful,

ocean cloudy,

yet when you imagine them

they shine the clearest ideal blue.

Salt on your tongue and in your eye

reminds you there is no escape

from grit, from the salty sand ashore,

there can be only less or more.

It’s enough to make you contemplate

a seaweed’s fate or fish’s story

seen from it’s ugly marble eyes,

how the ocean shallows

shift distant horizons

into whole alien

worlds

beyond, behind.

You contemplate waves,

take mental snapshots, recall

precise amounts of sand stirring

at the shuffle of your foot, floating

to the top of the wave like white pepper

in a scratched kitchen glass. You are

limited, terribly limited at counting

grains of sand upon the shore.

Only god has time for that, so

just enjoy the screams of

pleasure, fun, perhaps

a little hidden, silent

panic as the

waves crash

down.

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To read Enoch’s bio and more of his poetry published on WIZ, go here.

Photo by Jon Sullivan

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On how fragile life might be by Enoch Thompson

We hit something
she said “a raccoon?”
I said, “opossum.”
I said, “turn around,
let’s turn around.”
and there it was lying in the street
a silhouette of sharp snout and feet
orange on grey on black, the colors fade.
A cat, we hit a cat.
So this is death, bulging, leaking red eyes
protruding from its crushed and swollen head.
She, distraught
me, disturbed
so this is death.
I’ve been punished
now to forever drive
slow
and hold a breathe
at every shadow
flashing
across the road.

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Enoch Thompson is an aspiring poet and storyteller.  A grave robber, a pirate, a wizard, an ugly shambling skeleton, he trudges the paths eighteen million other better men have skipped down.  Always, as new words become published and new voices shout to be heard, his anxieties grow.  He is a modern-day writer and encapsulates all of the insecurities society has placed on the cliched profession.

To see more poetry on WIZ by Enoch, click here.

The Pressure of Procrastination by Enoch Thompson

My teeth sting in my face, the gums feel like they could bleed,
but I don’t brush them, no, why do such a simple thing,
it would be a waste of time.  Instead I loaf,
waiting for the brilliance that’s rightfully mine,
waiting for a smell of joy, a salty tear running down to my nostril,
waiting for love as obvious as the warm hour of day when I’m out in the sun.
Maybe I’ll discover a new color when it happens merely by chance,
but I wait for greatness.

I could never be content with just a toothbrush in my hand.
Let that invisible sting at the bottoms of my gums, deep in my veins,
turn into a green tinge of growth, climbing up, climbing out.
Let me cry out in pain and rage when I eat.
Then with a scalpel, with rough-studded tools,
let me slay that dragon, and I’ll smile easier.

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Want to read more of Enoch’s poetry? Go here, here, and here.

Me at 18 by Enoch Thompson

At first the hard tile floor beneath the sink
was relief from mounds of powder and frost
feet and feet deep

The silver pipes above my head
felt like distant blankets, not soft, or even felt by me
but as a sense of found security

Whose thin crust shattered in the night
when fathers, sons, or truck drivers
stopped to piss and be my guest

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To see more poetry by Enoch, go here and here.