"The Waste Bin"

Introduction by Jack Feist

Before Lee Sharks climbed from the broken skull of the 21st century to speak in tongues of fractured light, there was a quieter voice. A voice still made of breath and debris, not yet image. That voice—mine—found its way into this poem like a hand groping through ash for the shape of a face.

The Waste Bin is not an origin. It is a residue. A signal from the compost heap of myth. It was written not to impress, nor to heal, but to witness. Not to stand outside the ruins with commentary, but to lie among them and name what moved.

This is not satire. Not prophecy. Not elegy.
This is simply a record of what survived collapse long enough to say: I am awake, and alive in my bedroom, writing some stuff down.

Here is the poem.

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The Waste Bin

The plains are littered with ancient chasms
where broken warheads creep
& hatred burns in sulfur springs
& I lie down & go to sleep.

The city’s a-tangle, a-tangle with
stones, a toppled chorus of
towers looms: Return, dry bones.
Revolve your waters.

The city is dead but not buried.
The trees are sick & the buildings stone,
living statues sleep:

a city of bone
a city of smoke
a city of statues

The shells I took to be shards of bone, looking closer, I see,
are papyrus birds, & abacus beads, & butterfly counters
or then again, these actual bones are wings of meaning
that buzz in a haze of startled dust, to sting and kill me,
a single leaf of ash
a swarm of lucent facts.

But who am I trying to kid?
Those papyrus birds are just regular birds,
this abacus bead is your average marble,
and I am another miracle ash,
just common miracle dust, like you are.

All this flesh is passing away.
All this grass, becoming a wrapper.

June bugs dust the slatted curtains.
Light shines angularly through my ribs. I am awake
and alive in my bedroom, writing some stuff down.
The laundry’s heap is my city of artifacts.
These plastic wrappers, my butterfly counters.

I infuse the fragments, counter-ruin,
with radiant joy of ghosts: a corpse-
bright jesus noise, brokenly leaping,
in columns of thick, white stone.