Andrew David King
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Andrew David King, is a fifteen-year old poet from Fremont, California. The project is honored to have his voice. All music accompanying tracks was created by King.
MP3
M4A
Ichor
As he is gulping down sweat and asking himself how
he has wings instead of legs tonight,
his knees mimicking the bridge ahead of him
that is about to break him, pulsing and throbbing
and shooting off their opinions in zealous firecrackers,
he is still running on. Against his palm he feels nothing;
the weight of the gun has disappeared. He wants the safety
of his home again: the posters of human animals,
rockstars and saints trickling their martyrdom
down the walls of his room. He drank it
in like lifeblood, like wine, like the Colt 45s he paid
the street man to get for him from the Seven-Eleven,
Here’s a twenty, bro. Keep the change; I don’t need it.
That was a lie and he knew it. He loved the pull of the trigger—
only when behind the gun. The legends of the desert
outlaws—riddling his mind with tortuous possibility—
never taught him to think otherwise; no respect was paid
as a tax to authority. The school, the church: all temples
of the lame. No sacred hall filled with fervent illogicality
ever foamed at the mouth with such rabidity; no, it was
the next-door neighbor and the shot that flew through the night, on
its own pair of wings, to crash through stucco and wed
the rotting cedar studs four feet away from the head
of his bed. How much alike it was to his tombstone,
he thought in the reassuring aftermath, an uncanny resemblance.
Nothing to take sitting down with a glass of water.
So he drinks in the night air; tosses the empty can to lay
in the gutter’s graveyard along with the rest of them. No night
is ever different: raining or freezing or hot, all bear the same
air of every day in history that ever left a mental scar as wide
as a six-inch switchblade gash. These were the same sidewalks
scarred by the rubber he used to ride, pounded by his fierce
feet; a reminder of the monster that lived so preciously
inside of his veins, that he could never escape,
only satiate. He quickens his pace. His arms aren’t gracing
Arizona suburban desert air, they’re gracing her skin. Shit, shit, shit.
Just—just hold on, baby, we can fix this. And he remembers,
he feels for her, his eyes reach for her, as if what pours
out of her chest as she clutches it is only sterile, black
oil, the lifeblood of a machine, I just need you to hold on
for one more minute, please, baby, that’s it, nothing more than
what the pale streetlights cast out in buckets
against the crumbs of concrete,
strung together in a tangle of weeds like veins.
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MP3
M4A
The Obscuration of Intellect
my geometry teacher:
she has only spoken once,
and even then, not to me, about how
when she arrives at her cold house,
she goes straight into her room
without saying a word to her husband,
and locks the door;
about how the lampshades remain the same shade of yellow
no matter what season lives outside the cage
of her window
i imagine that it is
the things that we are never supposed to hear
that truly define the realities surrounding us
and unveil the creature, either benevolent
or malicious, that lives within
the minds of colleagues, pulling
on their vocal cords like puppet strings
she attempts to convey
what she has learned through years
of endless abstract equations, none of which
meant anything besides numbers, denying herself
the right to what really matters in one’s life:
she has discovered that
somehow, no calculation can find
a solution to the inevitability of fate
this is not what she tells me, this is what
i hear, casually, when i am supposed to be
taking notes quietly in the pages of a textbook.
and the truth is i am taking notes, only not
about math. i am taking notes on
which problems are extraneous, and which ones,
if left unsolved, will lock doors, and pull
curtains tightly shut,
leaving no light, no hope
to dance idly upon the floor
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MP3
M4A
The Jungle
It is midnight at the kitchen table, and I am almost asleep—
save for the faucet singing a lullaby of consonants.
I look up. Wretched jaws gape open above me—
who is there to save me from them?
No, it cannot be you. Those flashing teeth are yours.
I open my eyes and face the lines
strung across the paper like vines. No rhyme
scheme can save me this time. So I will not attempt.
I slam the notebook as fast I can—their force,
however, is more powerful than I, and they
have entered this space with me. Their total breath,
a steaming Amazonian zephyr, smells of deceased
carcasses, and of used dollar bills as they pass
between fingers. Is this the ghost of Art coming
to claim me? I knew Art, I knew him well before
he was consumed by the green beasts who screech
and hurl vowels like feces towards me. The crazed
toucan caws stridently and slices words open fearlessly.
The fan above gropes air and bats it towards my skin,
howling synonyms. Prefixes and suffixes leap about,
flailing their talons. The ring-tailed lemurs leap from
the kitchen floor, on top of the fridge, rocking it back
and forth, spilling similes everywhere and butchering
metaphors. I, in the meantime, crouch over this paper,
a lion over a antelope, claiming prey
before I, myself, am claimed as such. |
MP3
M4A
Spoon
I am older, now,
and things are different.
But when I was younger,
everything had a name,
a voice, a throat.
Even I had a name,
even though I did not know
that I had a voice.
The house was usually
always silent, except
for the constant murmur
of these voices, in
the dripping water
of the faucet, the tapping
of leaves against windowpanes,
the breeze whooshing
the curtain against the wall.
You, Chair, I don’t want
to sit in you today.
He would usually not say
anything, for Chair was
a quiet being and did his duty
without asking for any reward,
and did not insult easily.
I set the table for dinner.
Sorry, Spoon, but I’ll use you next time,
alright? No hard feelings.
But Spoon was very vengeful.
It is always ‘next-time’, he said.
He then, as always, cast my reflection
upside-down to scare me.
This is who you are! Spoon yelled
as he showed me the twisted
metallic image.
That is not who I am! I yelled.
So I slammed the drawer shut on him.
Orange Tree glared at my offense
through the kitchen window.
Look, Spoon was misbehaving,
I pleaded. I understand, said
Orange Tree. He’s always be
like that. I nodded my head,
But he can change. Orange Tree
did not smile. No, son, he
cannot. Nothing will ever
change him. Spoon screamed
from inside of the drawer.
Hush, Orange Tree! Then, I continued
in response to Orange Tree.
If Spoon cannot change,
then, at least, I can change.
Orange Tree did not respond,
and shook his branches
with all his might against the wind.
Then he sighed, after losing
many leaves. In arguments,
Chair almost never
spoke. But he did this time.
Chair said: Silence, to both
of you. When either of you
bears weight that is not
your own, then, and only then,
may you speak as if
you are wise. That was
the last time I ever heard
from Orange Tree,
or Spoon or Chair.
The medication has made all
of the voices silent.
Now, it seems, I have lost
all of my friends.
This house is now quiet,
but the world is noisy,
and not filled with teachers
nearly as kind.
When I was younger,
everything had a name,
a voice, a throat.
But I am older, now,
and things are different.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S
adi_Ranson
MP3
M4A
Exodus
We packed up our bags
and stood beneath
these columns of palms,
tired feet strapped into slavery
in sandals. Oh, how much
longer the streets stretched
when they were near empty,
a vast expanse; a sea of pavement
to be sailed. We hailed
a taxi like it was nothing, like
we had the money to pay for it.
But the truth always finds a way.
None of us begged to silence
the ideals that hid in the metal box
we had lugged into the trunk:
ten sentences, ten rules from
heaven above, carved
into stone tablets. They changed
everything. And yet. Here
we were, once again. The world
being transfigured by mere pilgrims.
Immigrants, nomads, home to
no one, nowhere. Stepping out
of the taxi and into the world.
Ready once again to conquer
the desert beneath
these tortured feet,
our god’s words
starving for air
in the trunk of the car. |
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