Pen Pahl Books

Poetry Collection

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Poetry is as malleable as it is endless. It can be your wildest dream or your darkest fear. It staves off questions and feeds curiosity. It’s there for you when you aren’t there for yourself.

It exposes you before it saves you.

Find these poems in FLASH POINT when it releases in stores

Veil

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The Bindlestiff

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Ghost Town

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Don’t Fall

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Empyrean

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Veil

Pacing to contemplate

Makes little more than packed dirt,

Roving over the coastline

No more than wasted life.

Nothing could provoke

Forefit to the bonfire

On the hill more than

A veiled ghost.

The sole ritual that

May cleanse the embers

As they claw at the night sky

Is the finicky passage of time.

I have learned to never

Question the way the ashes

May sow themselves

In the wind,

As if they seamlessly intertwine

With everything but the

Bleached divide between land and sea

Which so clearly attracts them.

A gray beach.

What fun it would be

To walk such a place

And playfully kick at the dust.

To be a child in Pompeii,

To point and giggle

At the volcano as it spews

Such dazzling lights all around,

Maybe then we could

Rest knowing that

Embers don’t draw blood

But sting nonetheless.

And thus the ghost

In an ashen veil reveals itself:

Forever married to the concept

Of unadulterated nothingness.

The Bindlestiff

A Tribute to My Great Grandfather Reino’s Poem of the Same Name, 90 Years Later

His no heritage of millions,

His lonely feet that roam in concert;

He may feel aching soles

Yet he suffers no discomfort.

He’s the only one who has a compass

But can’t point to home

With anything but a sweeping gesture

Before continuing to roam.

He isn’t on the road,

He is the road, nestled beneath a streetlamp;

A patchy sleeping bag, squeezed between light and dark,

The guy who sits in everyone’s camp.

He’ll tell riveting stories

Of nights spent in broken cars and university lots,

For he is but a bindlestiff,

Starving a stomach that was already tied in knots.

His life is a mere whisper,

His name a passing thought;

Nobody knows better than the bindlestiff,

Whose life and living are hard fought.

Sometimes you’ll see him

Gaze at the haze in the smog-ridden sky;

He’ll spread a toothy grin

And, without a word, just sigh.

Because, you see,

A bindlestiff has the roaming call;

He has the biggest heart, the widest smile,

But he questions if it was worth the fall.

Ghost Town

A sheet of blue rain

Creases the sky, and

A child on the street

Starts feeling like a poet.

Some of it falls on the vacant motel,

Which greedily scoops the liquid

Into its empty arms

As the stonewall facade cracks.

Some of it falls on the land

Where the police station used to be,

Now a thirsty plot of dirt that needs

The water to annoy anyone who steps on it.

Some of it falls on

The splintered roadways.

Some of it lingers in the air

To mask every bend and curve.

A lot of it goes here, there, and

All across town where no one can see,

Especially places the child

Is too short to peek at.

The kid, a boy, is wearing

A T-shirt and shorts.

His parents had dressed him

Without glancing outside.

Everyone runs to the local cannabis store

With its pristine windows

And pompous pillars out front,

Since it’s the nicest building in town.

The kid runs inside

And sits atop a crate of drugs, giggling.

He opens a notebook to write down

Every squiggly streak of rain outside.

He finishes the first stanza before feeling faint.

Don’t Fall Asleep

I can’t go to sleep

Despite my ashen eyes.

I’m surrounded by family and friends

Who I want to stay before I become a pillar of salt.

Every time I shut my eyelids,

I see what agony burns behind them:

Nothing, unadulterated nothing, framed by

The shadow of the room’s amber lamp.

My friends say goodnight,

Give me hugs, and

Speed home before the

Drunk drivers come out.

The fire bubbles in my gut

Like an anxious jury,

For I must stand and deliver

My own damned sentence.

The moon reaches its precipice

In the hazy night outside,

Illuminating my pale face

As family trickles from the room,

Like cracks through a dam,

Like my future,

Like how I drown in the sea

Of my own deliverance,

Until my father is the only one left.

The room stills. I still.

I fear that, if I move,

He’ll remember that he must go to sleep.

My eyes root themselves

To the bright television

And lose all time

In its warm glow,

Framed with darkness,

Until my dad stands and

Says goodnight before crossing

Into the other room.

Like a switch, the inferno snaps off.

A vast, bitter expanse swims in my vision

And punches through my chest

While the TV keeps talking to me.

My vision fades

But my eyes stay locked

On what remains of

Who I used to be.

Empyrean

May our voices ring to the skies

And build on each other.

The unified cry of division.

The eternal martyrdom of injustice.

The baby boy pondering our struggle

In a nearby house takes its first steps,

For we shall not arrive home,

And then it shall become one of us.

We sing the national anthem,

But amid tear gas and ruined choirs,

Among the riffraff of tomorrow,

I cannot fathom why.

The boy leaves his house,

Locks the door he could not reach,

Turns both cheeks to his maker,

And races toward the exit.

We sing our nation’s anthem

Without hesitation or hindrance.

We sing different songs.

They all say the same thing.

The man reaches the barricades,

But someone puts a bullet in his chest.

As he falls, another kid in a nearby house

Watches on with unknowing intent.

He might become a noble leader.

He might become the gun.

Our broken ranks garner the world’s eyes.

Our ragged voices draw the world’s ears.

We have not a name or a faction.

But we have names. We are each other.