Two Poems by Michael Monroe

The Source of Echoes

I deconstructed the universe and myself to the point of near-enlightenment.  How do I move on to the next level?  In school it’s easy; get an A in this class to move on to that class.  In the end, you get a paper stamped with trapped dreams, but what happens when you let them run into the wild winter trees?  They leave footprints in the snow that remain until the snow melts away, revealing fields of dry grass that blend together like paint on an artist’s easel.

Beltway Prison

When I was in high school,

we drove the beltway

around Baltimore’s haunting lights

in infinite loops

like a computer virus.

We watched the lines of trees

close us into our situation;

there was nothing to do

except trying to think

of something to do.

We listened to eight-tracks,

Saturday Night Fever

in the ’79 Chevy Impala,

trapped in a decade

twenty years earlier.

We longed for a time

when life was more free:

free parties, free drugs, free sex.

What else is there

for a sixteen year old kid?

Those things were out there

for someone, we knew:

the lightning jocks,

the sex-drenched cheerleaders,

the wild-eyed stoners.

But we were the outcasts,

trapped in our beltway prison,

and though the road was long,

we couldn’t come up with

an escape plan.