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