GRINDER OF DAYS

I can’t say I’m ready, but here I am, 
Dandy Death with your high collar and
your sleek low convertible. Take your time 
of course, but when you get here hop
on up to the front porch and buzz hard. 

Gentle Angel, keeper of sanguine 
harmony, kiss this stuttering mouth
that once was portal to cascading
appetites holy and profane, 
breathe your brand onto these blue lips. 

Do what you will, Harsh Judge, 
etch the list of my sins into 
this twitching flesh, draw
your eternal retribution for
my fleeting, unforgivable failures. 

Redemptive Wind, lift me starward 
from this suffering sphere, wipe clean
the mess of memory that plagues
my days and spirit me home to 
the languishing bang of my beginning. 

Go ahead, fuck with me
you Sick Trickster, bait me like
a chump, entice me with pork 
and crack and unprotected sex 
then sucker punch me in my stupor. 

Indifferent Machine, entropic gut, 
grinder of bones and days, intone
‘It’s nothing personal’ while your 
pipe drones to the last passion of
my struggle, my aspiring love. 

Michael Pearce’s poems have appeared in The Threepenny Review, The Yale Review, Nimrod, The Sun, Spillway, MockingHeart Review, The Gettysburg Review, and elsewhere, and have won several national prizes (New Ohio Review, Oberon, Dogwood, and others). His collection of poems, Santa Lucia by Starlight, won the Brighthorse Prize and was published by Brighthorse Books in 2023. He lives in Oakland, California, and plays saxophone in the Bay Area band Highwater Blues.