when the street becomes our home

i wonder
when the stock market
will, so violently, crash

causing bank accounts
to pull back & swell –
whose life

will the tsunami cleanse?
who will drown?
i lie in bed & calculate

ways i can't pay my bills.
what will be taken first?
the house - the car -

the knife i place on my wrist?
each item checked off
& carried out

until the only thing left
is my name. maybe.
though the government

will surely, lastly, take that.
the street will bleed my feet,
the cold will chap my skin.

who will give
the last of their change
when we're all fighting

for the corner to sleep.
for the cardboard box.
for the dry spot.

when holding war

we search the sky's
no moonlight –
charred black aroma.

& in my arms
we decipher the difference
between life & death.

the music is loud –
listen to the bass
of explosive songs

in the soundwaves,
in the background,
in the walls of your throat.

your breath lifts
a tender missile
into the drum of my ear

& silence thereafter
ricochets shrapnel –
your hand no longer knows

its trajectory.
your heart detonates
blood vessels.

john compton is a 33 year old gay poet who lives in kentucky. his poetry resides in his chest like many hearts & they bloom like vigorously infectious wild flowers. he lives in a tiny town, with his husband josh and their 8 dogs and 2 cats. he is the author of trainride elsewhere (Pressed Wafer/Rouge Wolf Press, 2016), that moan like a saxophone (kindle, 2016), ampersand (Plan B Press, 2019), a child growing wild inside the mothering womb (Ghost City Press, 2020), i saw god cooking children / paint their bones (Blood Pudding Press 2020), burning his matchstick fingers his hair went up like a wick (Black Heart Press, 2021), and to wash all the pretty things off my skin (Ethel Zine & Micro-Press, 2021). he has been published in numerous magazines and anthologies.