After reading the Boulder Weekly’s story on Scholastic National Student Poets
Program and the subsequent essay issue of the paper, local poet Troy Suben
approached the editorial staff with an idea: What about running poetry in the
paper on a weekly basis? We’ve undertaken the experiment here and kick off the project
with a few poems from Suben himself, who will henceforward curate this collection.
Respond: letters@boulderweekly.com
HAMMER
Sleep beside this unforsaken hammer.
Everything it is.
Cell phones and pineapples. Not
for their meaningfulness.
For being a person
significance doesn’t inhale from the mouth of a utility bill.
You, who isn’t sunlight
are gasoline for them. Not,
cell phones and pineapples. Not
their meaningfulness.
Cold mountain lion
prowls
washing our faces with its tongue.
Locked to a valley and the mountain, skinned,
all our faces.
No one has de-clawed its paws. The brick
exposes its paws de-clawed. “over the mantle”:
someone says before arriving anywhere here.
The brick, where its paws and our hands are similar.
Commercials.
Hear the violin in the rocks
each tree hears a voice
each speaks, (dimensions umbrella),
the brick’s color.
Locked in the brick
the last of brick’s origin talking
a gasoline voice.
No one can hold the brick. It’s
an unidentifiable human organ chewed up
obviously it cannot afford housing.
Without it people cannot afford to miss the neon.
Beside
the gasoline mountain.
Look a stranger in the face. Worlds
contained within utterance. Never
look at a stranger once. All rights
to be known. The essence of rocks
cannot bare emerge upon a brick demand.
Car honk. Invisible ancients
remain on the horizon.
Is this a place known for wind?
Spores sprawled beneath shadow of mountain
overwhelms us
nothing what trees or rocks mistake.
Nothing in trees or rocks hear
the brick, an empty street, remains
comforting
sky contains mountain depth
the Niwot museum.
Love stands beside an unforsaken hammer.
— Troy Suben
COFFEE BEAN
Nothing it seems can crack corrupt progression
building more opportunities for elevator music or disturb
speed at which upscale windows ascend silence,
year after year, reconstructed facial features electricallandmarks
— screens assemble the body —prices rising
for birds out-of-town high-end neighborhoods fly in
and expect to peck at fanciest china plate regardless of
season; traffic and whispers of a shopping district, a
horn player, bearded man’s backpack, skin folding
mechanical-grey-camouflaged apartments — what could
become redistribution: calcium, iron, magnesium — coffee
bean transplanted residency, vacant parking spots
free on Sunday, topsoil which houses arid mountain
peaks sustainable for pine trees.
— Troy Suben
Troy Suben is an open mic night host, poetry teacher and
published poet.
PLACES
People living in this place
in every perception people, a self,
to alleviate alleviate by
people when population inhales
anyone must go for conversation
whatever coffee bird-speckle ground
purchasing enough elongated speech
gifts thing in common
people, blocks with sound,
not that anyone is greatly afraid of
another, but it’s hard to hear
if anyone houses what can’t
allow conventional know-how to end —
people dwell above economy-surgery
(friendly street corner now stranger: 17th
and
Walnut)
and if a dread
of mirrored generation
tars away by commercial’s wall of speech
—
decays to a putrid behavioral puss of
snow
that there always is when people lie
to themselves, a computational
replacement for voices, it’s hard to see
such privilege
bear humanity behind a silence of consumption
because my eyes have become carboard
cups by
familiarity
people here can serve to remind each
other
places that bring conversations-smile
— Troy Suben
