In Your Gourd, Off the Dime

By A. M. Langston

If you could choose what your dreams would be about tonight, what would you choose? Would you be in the kitchen, holding a knife to the neck of an intruder? In the desert, lying under a flaming, wrecked car with the person you love? Reading "In Your Gourd, Off the Dime" can be letting A. M. Langston choose your dreams for you. Read a page right before bed, or read a few. Let the spirit of each poem cut open your window screen, and carry you to a dimension you've never visited before.

• Language: English
• Publisher: A. M. Langston
• Release date: Sep 3, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393838890

A. M. Langston

A. M. Langston is a restless millennial searching for meaning inside the wires and waves that make up the technology surrounding us during our every waking minute. Born in Illinois in 1988 and raised across the United States, he has called New Mexico home since 2004. "Couch to Couch, Never Leaving the House", Langston's first poetry collection, was published on June 21st, 2017.

Book preview

Part One

The Napping Turtle

––––––––

you get [trapped]

fall asleep in a

d  e  e  p

warm blanket

you can

a  s  l  e  e  p

years of your life away

get  f  a  t

forceforceforceforce yourself into a job

the biggest fear is shitting your nice pants

scaring your BOSSES out of the room

i w.o.k.e.

up a few months ago

started writing again

got back on the road

to making music

am going to paint

and i’m not going to be afraid

to shit anything

anymore

The Gourd

––––––––

my brain got :c:l:o:g:g:e:d: ^up^

blood clo.ts fucked how i think

it was water on the brain

on a flight to illinois

we got on the s  t  r  e  t  c  h  e  r

to the +hospital

to get the clo.t removed

water drained

everyone else

they’re still out of their gourd

like i was

you can tell when they’re smart

devious, conspiring against

your friends

_unstoppable_

those kinds of fuckers

are out of their gourds

Dimes

––––––––

even

down here

most of my life is

there is good

there is bad

i don’t know which i’m in

most of the time

until wards(after)

i can look

back and see

lately most are good s

the safe ness

where you have a blanket

and big bed with feather pillows

heavy to move from beneath your neck

s where my grandma

is sitting watching letterman with me

in middle of the summer heat

shitty sitcoms, but no school

and i’m a kid, so what do i care?

where i’m back [on] the dime

taken care of

two small worlds, half a world apart

don’t know about drugs or money

the s i’ve been having these days

i sit here waiting for

the coin to flip

Swing Full On

––––––––

there are only a handful of things

i remember from a long time ago

that were horrid

it makes writing about reality seem like a lie as i type, like i’ve got nothing to say and sometimes I write a *lot* just to cover up the fact that i have nothing to say or to put on the paper

like i’m not real

my parents were good

my family was good

we’ve all grown as close together

as we can

when I turned thirty

everyone from my childhood poofed

into adults

this is one of those poems where i’m trying to think of something deep to say and it just ends up being wasted time for all of us because my childhood environment wasn’t the est thing i’ve been through

in fact

i would say it probably wasn’t even real

unrequited

––––––––

a car drives through a puddle on an American street

splashing a normal man

who becomes a normal amount of damp

shakes his coat out

wrings his shirt

the dry driver is on his way home

to sit in that car in the garage

and exhaust himself to death

the damp man goes home to his wife

who hangs his close up

hugs him until he is warm and dry

bakes him in a yellow light

tucks a blanket under his chin

the damp man is now dry

he thinks

"god damn that driver

i hope he fuckin dies"

nothin

––––––––

it’s somebody’s birthday

somebody else caused some problems

punched one of the