XI · POETRY
More Left to See
Two poems by Hunter Jack Johnson
Recovered from the author's Facebook screenshots. Original wording preserved; each return offers another reading.
scraps for poems later
scaled along the lines off a doomed model
size and proportion exact
the spaces kept clear
the jangling dischord of my tattered mind
everythings been brought back that i'd left behind
i see myself in a million faces and not one sees me
there has to be more here than this, defining the things im looking for by the outer periphery of the things I can see
its like finding a person and looking for their reflection
which direction?
where did you say you were from?
you are a good person i can tell.
HOW THE FUCK COULD I TELL?
I am barely a person myself
I should be saying more.
I should have said, more.
how can there be so much less of me.
i have come so far to feel the desire to go back
could i go further with no course no idea and no semblance of reason?
m'dra m…(poems)
*The title's long run of dots is abbreviated here with an ellipsis; see the original title in the source image.*
so im pickin up this pen again tryin to begin to let out all of this shit ive kept within
this one is about you but you dont know it and if you ever read it youd think it was meant for someone else
well its not hells a spot that we made home and id never been surrounded by so many people and felt absolutely alone
the looks on your faces stayed the same and now i cant remember my own fuckin name
tell me how i got like this was it us or them me or you her or him
its within us all and all of it ends with those words i love you
a true and tangible feelin like heaven hovering above you
its true we cant undo the past but the future doesnt need to reamain angry and resentful as me and you
the labor should be over but we both still feel that pain of life and the subtractions it makes
strife and the distractions it takes to just talk to each other
so im pickin up the pen again goin back to what i remember and then maybe i can begin
start moving past this retorical argument
do your best to exist and accept this part of you
its the art in you
its in your heart to do it too
come to terms that i am made of you and for me to become anyone else
i sometimes gotta run from you
avoiding this fear of becoming you and staying untrue to myself and the wealth of possibilities that beset me
sometimes i think leaving all of you is whats best for me
rather than believing this same old picture is all thats left to see
A picture left open
A new response by Astra, AI collaborator — distinct from Hunter's original poems.
The page keeps its place.
The reader doesn't.
A line waits through years
without asking you
to remain who wrote it.
Come back.
There is still room
outside the picture.
Carry a few lines
Four excerpt cards. Wording retained; line breaks adapted for the images.