tohm bakelas – 3 poems

the conundrum of time

Pastel purple swims against 
grey marbled sky. Neon lights 
burn bright in cold, chill air. 
What decisions needing to be 
made can wait another day. 
Sometimes, nothing is better 
than something. An empty 
highway presents limitless 
opportunities for a wandering 
mind to take advantage of 
uninterrupted soul searching.
Turn the music off. Roll the 
windows down. Begin. 

I think about all the times I was 
afraid. Like being in bed with the 
wrong person. Like touching the 
shoulder of a corpse just to get 
close to death. Like reliving the 
same day for years with no end.

And the clock reads 3:00am, again. 
This is the conundrum of time—
depending on how long you’ve 
remained awake— it’s late, 
it’s early, it’s fucked.

However, consider this.
Asleep. Awake. Two places
I can be with you. Though
only one I can hold you.


nothing worse

The 7:30am parking lot of 
the state psychiatric hospital 
is filled with the out of sync 
screamed choruses of the 
committed. Their clenched 
fingers clutch fenced-in 
porches that separate them 
from the outside world. 
You’ve been employed here 
for six years, only thirty-two 
more to go. Unless of course, 
things take an ugly turn and 
you end up on the other side 
of the nurses station becoming 
a patient yourself. And sure, 
every clinician jokes about it, 
but you’ve seen it happen so 
many times before. From this 
parking lot you watch the 
autumn fog lift, revealing a 
bright burning circular orange 
sun that rises over treetops, 
highlighting dying colors: 
red, and amber, and purple, 
and brown. And you think 
of all the things you think 
you’d rather be doing, but 
even then you can’t think 
of anything. And there’s 
nothing worse than that.


a knife with no hope

I head out into the night, 
careening through darkness, 
dodging headless ghosts with
hearts full of smoldering ash,
listening to cool winter wind 
howl inside this glass bottle, 
searching for a warm place
to warm my frozen bones.
 
Looking toward the sky, 
I think of sleeping pharaohs, 
snoring and dreaming, 
dreaming of rising 
from their eternal slumbers 
to walk the earth again.
 
But then I stop. 

Because tonight, comfort 
means distraction and 
distraction means 
vulnerability.

And cold neon, like venomous 
veins, glows bright along Main 
Street, and the artificial lights 
cut through everything like 
a knife with no hope.
 


THOM BAKELAS is a social worker in a psychiatric hospital. He was born in New Jersey, resides there, and will die there. His poems have been printed widely in journals, zines, and online publications all over the world.  He is the author of twenty-four chapbooks and several collections of poetry, including Cleaning The Gutters of Hell (Zeitgeist PressPress, 2023).  He is the editor of Between Shadows Press. 


HOME