Two poems by Nate Pritts

 

 
 
Spork's Poetry
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Two poems by Nate Pritts

09/08/2010

INCURSION DIALOGUE

Months tumble slow & we'll leave
these days behind us;
we'll gladly forget
all the people we've been.
There's somewhere we're going

& the streets that we follow
are slick with rain.
It's always night when I lose my way.
I try my damndest to smile
even three more times,

try to believe in myself,
but I don't know which hand
to put the sun in. I'm stuffed full
of clouds & I'm barely holding on.
Excuses float by me, words

fading off in the heat. Seasons
drift through me. You tell me
reprieve or you tell me deceive.
I can't pick either one
& be right with myself.


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WE'RE MAKING MISTAKES TOGETHER

Forget all your dreams since they're forgetting
about you. They pretend that you're capable,
or better than you are. You wake up much worse-

wrecked in the morning with birds in that light.
That light promises a whole new landscape but
don't believe it! Hold tight to the failures that fill up

your outline like a cloud silhouette made out of anger.
Stacks of paper were shuffled & machine-mangled
while you slept through the mist. Find the lost page

that fits in, that helps it make sense: a signature
needed or else the parcel rejected. Let me sing
a few more of these ruins to you. The starting

is over & we're both living still. Stand up
if you can because I'm talking to you & the whispers
assail my affections again. Look: even things that evade me

still lodge in my cosmos & the stars that I'm thinking
shoot themselves out. Here's where I write another
line about galaxies because it'll sound like I've got science

to back me up. I'll use the word orbit but maybe mean
plunge then I'll talk about heaven & mean something less.
My circling degrades & leads me to you & we both

know better but seem not to care. Tell me when you hear
a reason to blare from my radio static.
My hope is a bare hope since it's naked & fleeting.


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Nate Pritts is the author of four full-length books of poems - The Wonderfull Yeare (Cooper Dillon Books, 2010), Honorary Astronaut (Ghost Road Press, 2008) & Sensational Spectacular (BlazeVOX, 2007), & the forthcoming Big Bright Sun (BlazeVOX). He is the founder & principal editor of H_NGM_N & H_NGM_N BKS.