Monday, June 18, 2012


Tom Pescatore grew up outside Philadelphia, he is an active member of the growing poetry/lit scene within the city and hopes to spread the word on Philadelphia’s new poets. He maintains a poetry blog: amagicalmistake.blogspot.com. His work has been published in literary magazines both nationally and internationally but he'd rather have them carved on the Walt Whitman bridge or on the sidewalks of Philadelphia's old Skid Row. 


To dream of Reality and the Outcome
We stood back-to-back
against the insane map of the stars
bordering on un-reality,
I saw every twinkling existence
the shroud of the milky way
the black holes and supernova
births, we stepped toward them
and the darkened moving away,
our footholds were hard, invisible
but concrete, space was something
else entirely, not what we'd been told,
each time we moved forward
it was like gigantic light-speed leaps,
the stars were merely illusory lights
a thumbnail of burning gases on black wallpaper,
the was the great charade, the great
universal lie,
our lives were vindicated.

 On-coming

Saw the tracks on the
wrong side of Columbus,
Vitaly had pulled out into
oncoming traffic, wrong side
of the road, heading right into
old broken down trolley River
Styx and we were next to try
and cross it, but I noticed in those
final seconds and we slid to a halt
on a patch of grass, and the faces in
the cars were watching, the headlights
blaring, the last vespa bent to the road south
before we could u-turn the bitch and
get on I-95, "Fuck, Vitaly, you
almost killed us!" Will was hammering
the dashboard, "Yea,
I admit that but they gotta put up some fucking signs,"
He's right I thought in the back seat
there weren't any signs, no signs
pointing the wrong direction.

The factory

We can find the bed forever
for whatever you want
or nothing, heaving dry promises
at the crowds, I'm full of promises
and most don't work out as I planned,
or work out for me, or ever come
to fruition,
I get caught up in making them
preparing them like a cracker
each layer folded over the last
until it's so heavy I can't lift it
and you have to chew through it,
all the flour and salt and no water
to wash it down

The scene is set after shower

Avoiding the puddle spreading out
on the desk, a piano playing some wheres
I couldn't see, the shower whining behind, I
wasted my life on the screen gladly, roaring madly—
me, who was bent to the keyboard chattering,
me, trying to rip something from my soul I
wanted to be there, whether I had to make it
exist or fuck it and pretend, me, dressed in unbuttoned
flannel shirt and torn blue shorts, me, thinking
out there into the space, out there where you are walking in the rain,
I guess, walking and looking inward burying your past,
me creating this act of blister, mortar, pound—
at the clock ticking with the water's dripping, the rhythm invading
Kerouac's voice as he reads from Visions leaning to
the piano's soothing unpredictably, as the pattern rises,
as the keys spread achingly indistinguishably forward
through perceived stop motion time, slam! Here it goes, Aw!
across gulfs of years and experience without sadness, leaving me
here, a lone fleshy brainless lump, tapping, avoiding, beaming, bleeding,
sleeping, eating, ending, forgiving, careening, caring, repeating,
watching the water dry out

 We killed them

Artists don't sit inside all
day to write and type and suffer,
they play on their iphones and macs
with dull eyes editing music files,
remixing old sounds, taking
photographs that seem
somehow older even though they
don't know why, they catch the movie
to marvel at the book (it's YA fiction)
then the next day read it on the train
cover out and facing the crowd, and
they dance at night clubs to hip-hop and
techno in the nearest up-and-coming
neighborhood, their drunken image tagged on
facebook, exchanging that for actual fame,
and remain blissfully ignorant of the truth
because artists don't think for themselves
or think at all anymore, hell,
they don't even try, because
for the most part
when their head hits the pillow
around 5am
they're plain fucking dead
and nobody gives a fuck.


Trying to get some sleep

I could hold the sky in my palm,
wipe it onto depth-less reality like
an unguent cure in this after-night
morning glow pink rising to a
dark purple that settles like a fog on abandoned streets,
instead I get up and walk heavily to the bathroom
to wash my face and hands,
the floor boards creak with each step,
my ceiling fan whines non-stop,
the subway makes its first run, and
I'm alone counting the surges of pain in my knees,
waiting for the next rattle of tracks heading north,
waiting for the sun to rise from the east
and annihilate this perfect thought



Helpless I do not know if good intentions prevail among the elected, among the appointed, leaving me apprehensive that the fate ...