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Best Poems Written by B. Andrew Kelly

Below are the all-time best B. Andrew Kelly poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | B. Andrew Kelly Poem

Hi Storm

In mania, the body unbinds itself.
The skeleton’s dense marrow becomes hollow,
an avian adjustment. It is accelerated evolution.
Fluttering and floating in a slew of thoughts
like nervous wind chime chatter.

My brother blew in through the rattling gate
accompanied by October’s cruelest gale.
Eyes unwillingly wide, levered by a crowbar
his hazel doorways ripped from their hinges.

He ran fervently through the streets of West Chester
with lungs coated with cannabis and amphetamines
until there was blood beneath his toenails, dripping out
just like Jesus’ wine weeping out from his searing limbs.

As he entered into the home of our distant childhood,
his back burned from the warm wrath of penitent leather
the self-flagellation, the begging for the flames of Purgatory
To appease the eyes of a looming Lord
his fate-sealing gaze hidden in twilight’s comforting veil

He says he holds a guilt beyond human comprehension,
that he is an evil person. I tell him we are just flawed people.
After a decade of intentful detachment, my brother cracks open
his ribcage as it blooms like a flower from his sternum.
He says there is a sickness in his soul, and that I will
never truly know him.

My mother and father have had heads made of granite
since he has come home. There are heavy eyes shadowed with
bags made of storm clouds. They have prayed with their
clergy. They have contacted multiple attorneys.

My sibling is a storm that has wrought ruin, but
he can heal. His violent storm might sow a beautiful season
The warmth of his first real smile will bring upon renaissance,
and as the tears and snot seep into the soil of my shoulder
our cheeks may grow a vibrant emerald moss.

Details | B. Andrew Kelly Poem

a poem inspired by glitchore that will age poorly probably

Fingertips click a
desperate breakbeat
as eyes glaze over
in blue light baptism
please overwhelm me

Binary jungle,
you glowing cesspit
through the clipping
curtain echoes a choir
of post-post ironic
agoraphobics. 

Dopamine is a myth,
an expired meme 
deemed mega cringe
Let the file rot into 
informational abscess

Here we all wait before
Heaven's blockchained gate
tired of partaking into
a satire so removed from
a cogent solution,
It is simply void.

Here is coldest oblivion in
this stupid cyborg machine,
but the world is so 
Y2K heat death-core
Whatever that means

It turned a generation
made us abandonware
Just to feed us nostalgia
for times when we
would bother to care.

Details | B. Andrew Kelly Poem

Driving in the Snow with One Windshield Wiper

Diagonal snow
Glides effortless through
the countryside of the
Amputee windshield
For the passenger side
Has always had a reticent view

Steam rises loftily
From a topless treat
Of gas station coffee
That which further
Obfuscates the scene

Mousey and silent
Each flake falls
Like the wings of
An owl unhurried
Speckling the air
With flurries of tiny
Feathers

If snow is a blanket, is the
Earth a frightened child?
Is there a force, a specter
So haunting it summons
A crystal storm that beguiles,
Sure, a burden to some
But a spectacle for all.

High beams undress
The night, slipping away
Its silken onyx sundress
In its unblinking gaze I
Recall conversations with
Someone I no longer see
Hoping for fireplace romance
Surrounded in snow globe scenery

I try not to live 
in the squall of regret
Even if every drop
Falls so softly, I must
Simply keep my foot
On the petal, and listen
To the engine’s counsel
Its kind whispering pistons.

Details | B. Andrew Kelly Poem

My New Old Mourning Routine

There are tears mixed 
into the pancake batter
sun is still obfuscated 
by the window shades
without sunshine, I still 
wind up a morning person
Tobacco clings to me, 
where your scent would be
sewn with many memories 
into the mesh of myself
a premature family crest, 
stained and worn

The new day shows 
only one outcome remains
the eggs are runny, 
my nose sniffles into an arid oasis
no sunny side seems 
to show up these days
I wake up to an empty pillow, 
your space hollow through
but I still cannot but help myself 
from making breakfast for two.

Details | B. Andrew Kelly Poem

Relapse

A quake took place
between my shoulder blades
teeth ground to dust behind my face
the scraping of tectonic plates
scared me to my hiding place
bottles and blankets, a child’s space
it cannot withstand the shakes
that are now all too commonplace.

Details | B. Andrew Kelly Poem

Canaknas

Selected by the swift sound of hand to shoulder blade,
The bells upon their ankles sounded like seven trumpets
to me. I had been a chosen sheep among the Shepherd’s flock.
Lead me my Pharisees, I wish to see feel the glee in following
the Lamb within me.

The weight of my new necklace, crudely crafted of twine and timber,
swayed in a schism'd rhythm between my shins
bruises born from my steadfast faith. For I have never fasted
Before, all there was in my Ziploc bag was a single raw egg,
Two slices of wonderbread, three matches with no book.
I heard fireflies bounce in the air between my ears,
I could not see, you see I was blindfolded, but I felt no fear.
The marching sounds stopped, balsam trees surrounded me
and the rest of the chosen tribe.

Night befell the evening, the stars jumped and danced for me
For the Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty, His strength
flowed like the river Jordan in my veins. I had no chains.
Never had I felt grace like this before.

We awoke with gnats in our nose, centipedes between our toes
We arose, and our trials we must undergo.
Silence is the sound of our worship, broken by the
wood bashing between our bitten legs.
The kindling was wet, the bread was stale,
forging for food in the raspberry bushes, hunger flashed
in front of my eager eyes.

Memorize second Corinthians, some stories
I no longer care to remember. I felt the splinters
in my shins, the twine singed the hairs of my neck.
The breeze swung between the leaves and sung chants
that worshiped the King amongst kings.

The counselor crept out of the brush, and with
immense embarrassment I flushed
any of the chances of becoming one of the chosen few.
I could not immerse myself within the verses.
His eyes struck disappointment deep into my gut,
his knife drawn I knew I was cut.

The log crashed to the ground like lightning, the
twine left my skin red and raw. It felt like the 
sting of a thousand roses thrust upon my nape.
My cross was no longer mine to bear, it was the end

I didn’t care.
I didn’t care.
I didn’t care.

I descended from the shining hill, back to
the cabins and basketball nets. I had failed.
There is a creek I will never wade, never cross,
I drowned in my disdain, my faith may be lost.
Another camper, another kid, lost in the flock
of the Shepherd’s failed kin.

Details | B. Andrew Kelly Poem

Ballad for the Wacky Waving Inflatable Tube-Man

air rockets skyward
uppercutting inside
plastic neon flesh
contorting at inhuman angles
what does my body language spell?

ankles anchored into the Earth
to stay grounded as the wave
of time and space crashes
a flood of stagnant flux

there is a symphony of bones
snapping and cracking
in twisted orchestrations
the act of existing for me
is a resilient demonstration

Details | B. Andrew Kelly Poem

A Key to Understanding the Selves We Left Behind

To soothe the cornered inferno
Consuming a sanctuary abandoned
Spider's silk like snow kissed ground
Walls caressed by a nurturing moss,
A mausoleum of birth
The detached ruins we carry
A firefighter's hose spouts curses
To cauterize a ghastly flame
The fire fights itself separately
So the lever pullers on the dispatch
Call into the ears of a healer
To douse themselves in gasoline
There is no pain, for in
Recognition there is warmth
The exiles of the charred asylum
Need something true to human heart
An acknowledgment of all their parts

Details | B. Andrew Kelly Poem

Disenchantment, a London Lecture in 1933

Jung lectured of dogma
its strangling of the symbol
the Medieval melted with magma
doubt was born, its smile twinkled
As monks wrote songs of Poliphile

Seeking soul from the external
in the Enlightened world,
nothing seems to be real
For eons our ancestors
were certain of the eternal

Is the light worth its weight?
Pain now lifted by pharmaceuticals
A flock who just can't walk straight
Now we live in plight or we are
simply deemed neurotypical..

Details | B. Andrew Kelly Poem

An Altar Now Unworshipped

I hold your hand, my guiding light
To our home, a warm November hearth
My treasure, my altar to life

Sweetest coffee, my pure delight
Blanket of bliss, your jubilant mirth
I hold your hand, my guiding light

In crisp ashen skies flies a kite
When sunshine tires you make up its worth
My treasure, my altar to life

Hair tranquil midnight, skin Valette white
Angelic kiss, your hips sway with your pert
I hold your hand, my guiding light

You surpass art, O perfect sight
I was made for you since birth
My treasure, my altar to life

Starshine my goddess of achrondite
I covet time with you on this Earth
You are my all, and all is right
My treasure, my altar to life