C. D. Bailey

A Rehab and that One Time there was a Flood

That old abandoned building is finally being turned into something again. A rehab. Used to be a shoelace factory.
There’s hope that it won’t be useless anymore like the other abandoned buildings in town. There are so many empty buildings in this town that used to have a purpose other than being made of bricks and standing still. Sometimes people would be inside these buildings talking to other people about the time there was a flood and a woman drowned saving her baby                    and how it was a tragedy                    and how they still are                afraid of water                        or                                 how there used to be jobs and people that wanted to have jobs. That old abandoned shoelace factory is being turned into a rehab and it’s still made of bricks as old as the flood that killed a mother who saved her baby. They used to make shoelaces, but shoelaces can’t absorb enough water to stop a flood from killing a mother saving her baby. Not even 100,000 shoelaces could have kept this town tied together.

VICE TV, A Boy Turning Blue Next to Railroad Tracks

There’s a kid making noises with his throat              he is bluer
than most people are               sometimes people in my hometown
are bluer than most people                 sometimes a shade of purple
another junkie in the grass hidden in weeds               another person
another someone’s child                     father              husband                      
human being there’s a kid on VICE TV and he looks like a bruise
on fruit            the town made of fruit            the police are telling a woman how to put breath inside a dying boy
and she is screaming   he’s blue                     he’s blue                     he’s blue
his face is a goddamn crater inside a crater on the moon
he is full of                              h o l e s                       nobody loves people
with                                                     h o l e s                       Jesus, son of god
had h o l e s                             in his hands     never hear enough
about the godfuckingdamn h o l e s      in his hands
there is a dead boy somewhere by some railroad tracks
he is the creation of a disaster                        A         h o l e
forming in the spot where a dead boy used to be.

 

C.D. Bailey is a trash poet from Wheelersburg, Ohio. His work has appeared in a handful of literary magazines/journals.