Christopher James

The Morning the Mechanism Broke: & Other Poems Christopher James

At a specific point in time dresser drawers burst open; moving boxes begin to spit paper about the room. Words explode on coffee tables. journals burn, and ink stained napkins flutter from jacket pockets. A man digging in the refuge relives his life. He laughs, vomits, sings, and screams. The words get stuffed back in the boxes, but stealthily they reappear among camping equipment, tax returns, and money order receipts. He continues to face himself in the reflection of alphabetic operations. One day he finds himself living on a tiny, mastless sailboat in Santa Cruz, California. The boxes begin to undulate with the tides. The excuses dissolve in salt water, and the time arrives to let the words go. The Morning the Mechanism broke is a high speed collision of emotion and memory. Every word is a love poem. Every word is a suicide note. Every word is a declaration of resistance.