Joshua Baumgarten - Four Poems

Watch the Cinema Wash Away

The scenes we watched
were not from the director of
Independence Day or 2012.
Will Smith did not save the day.
the oh's and ah's and hands over gasping mouths,
collectively we streamed the devastation
there was no need to download a film that day.

First came the awe
then the realization
that Mother Nature's power
is in the end
that much more beautiful and relentless
than any hyped up human imagination.

There are no clear cut
Hollywood plot lines
running along
the serrated edges
of this real life
fault line.



Asylum Seekers are not Fireproof

Through slanted eyes and swirling minds
They watched the man ignite himself like
An oil field on fire in the center of the Dam,
On a sunny Wednesday afternoon in early spring, a buzz
Kill for all to see, especially for those who had just
eaten a flame grilled kebab or
had dropped another hit of cut
Ecstasy.



The Garden

Another day slip away
Candle forgive me for burning
You from both ends
Like poison flowers caressing
Innocent skin excuses purged
Silence screaming strangled within.

Windows covered with dog snot
Paw prints and bird shit
Nothing to see in the garden anyway
Its been a long winter weary
Still some time to wait before
A blooming has the balls
To breaks free.

The sun falters
behind fat assed clouds
The spring half baked in stoned slanted eyes
The morning cracks under thin layers of lingering ice
The birds we hear chirping sing
Confused songs before swooping
For the leftovers rotting within.



Fuck Lego

lego disasters

The crumbling pieces of x-wing fighters and
Castle walls
Caught under bare foot
Between fungus and blistered toes
stick like shards of shattered dreams

Into the dried and callous bulb of my foot
Of my soul,
Of my entire overtired
And weary eyed being.

a breakfast table overcrowded
with drawings of three headed elephants
letters from school
hairpins and tax forms
hard boiled egg shells,
newspapers smudged with instant coffee
and everyday mild hysteria
toasted white bread with poppy seeds waiting
to be smothered by
overly exaggerated yellow imitation butter
my eyes flutter to wake up a little bit more

and I notice my agenda and five record lp’s
somewhat submerged in my sons fish tank.



I sigh and
try to swallow getting angry
But Monday mornings are a bitter pill
The size of an elephant tranqulizer

That I can’t seem to swallow without
A shot of tequila
And well at 8 am on a Monday
Morning while trying to get your kid out the door to school
A shot of tequila is maybe not the best way to swallow my impending explosion
Into subtle rage and sublime insanity.
So I just swallow myself instead and push my being
up from the table,
Head hung low and go
remove my agenda and the records from the fish tank
All the while checking the floor for lego pieces

That if stepped upon
Would surely detonate this fathers head
To implode.



Joshua Baumgarten is an expat New Yorker residing below sea level in the Netherlands. A poet for the page as well as spoken word performer. Baumgarten is the man behind the Irrational Library, an organization dedicated to putting together the most erratic and exotic rock-n-roll evenings on his side of the world. Baumgarten's work can be found in zines from New York to Los Angeles to Amsterdam.