Jeff Taylor lives with his wife and kids in Massachusetts where he is a union worker when he isn’t writing poems. Jeff has performed at universities, theaters, festivals, bars, coffee houses, and sidewalks across the east coast and is a member of the 2023 Lizard Lounge Slam Team. You can find his work in recent issues of The Bloodshed Review, BOMBFIRE, Oddball Magazine, Cajun Mutt, The Alien Buddha Get’s A Real Job vol.2, American Graveyard (Read or Green Books), and The New Generation Beats 2023 Anthology.
Tobacco & Hash
Jenn was a professional drunk
got killed by a rookie.
What a crap career is that anyway?
When Jenn & I were in Florida
we paid too much
for a joint of tobacco and hash
the spliff got too wet to smoke
as we rain danced on the pier
cyclones twisting around us.
She overcame addiction
only to have her life ended
by someone who
wasn’t there yet.
I like to think
the woman
who caused the accident
was Jenn’s soulmate
they lived thousands of lives together
through thousands of universes
weaving the possibilities
of two beings colliding.
The roar of this life
reduced to the moment
they floated toward each other
locking eyes before everything went black.
Jenn once told me
she wanted all her friends
to smoke her ashes
so we wouldn’t make
the same mistakes she did.
What if we all smoked
our dead friends' ashes?
Would there be an energy transference
reverberating across generations
raising our collective consciousness
to new levels of possibility?
Would we take on the weight
of each other's lives?
Reduced To Art
I
build
towers
to watch you
ride horses
through our bed
I will
guild frames
for the pictures
of you
painted
on the inside
of my skin
I am raw for you
