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Vaughn Chandler-Haas Poem
I don’t want to die,
the spring doves cried.
Down the streets and coffee shops
each step in the pavement whittles it down
bit by bit. I don’t want
to die, the flyers say,
through ten layers of
broken staples, of
missing pets. I don’t
want to die, says the cat
on the large wire fence, where someone
has woven it through with leaves.
It meows at me, and I
don’t want to die, the world
spins around with no thoughts
in mind, the people spin around
with their thousands of wishes,
planets of desires,
orbiting each other, and everyone keeps
crashing, the world caves in quietly,
silently so no one else can see
the sinkhole splitting open
I don’t want to die, I don’t want
to die, I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die
Copyright © Vaughn Chandler-Haas | Year Posted 2023
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Details |
Vaughn Chandler-Haas Poem
–And so all I can say to the soft cooked flesh
beneath my teeth and the smell of dust
and felt is this; when you think you are
alone, you are. When you think you are not,
you are not. When the waves crush and flood
the streets, you will be left with this
band on your wrist. We eat our fill,
and then some more. Everyone thinks you
are attractive, wants to be you, wants to be
with you, but no one is willing to
speak. To understand. And thus your
idolization leads to your abandonment.
In this dark, cramped room, you may
breathe. No-one exists here but you.
Your arms length reach widens, widens,
widens till it bleeds. Fate is not a word
for people like you — you were the only
one with a say, and you said “Be destructive.”
You said “Let it fall, as it’s all nothing.
There is no difference between the mist
and the sky. Let the world be eaten up,
be drained, woven like clay. If I am the world,
let me die, so I may rest.”
Copyright © Vaughn Chandler-Haas | Year Posted 2025
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