Excerpts from
Unbuttoned and Slightly Smelling of Ink
Bones scraping bones, steaming finches and other exultations of a writing muse
Copyright © 2025 Greg Philby
I Hope They Like This Poem
Copyright © Greg Philby
I hope they like this poem.
I spread golden muse on it,
sprinkled it with God and shit
for those who wear their shirts
on the outside.
It rhymes
at times
for those who take their fruit
peeled and seedless. I wrote it
to be deep if someone wants to
think so, or swirling in pretty
ribbons of the heart. Whatever.
Here’s an extra Joy, for God’s sakes.
And a Love, a Despise and an
inscrutable Aegid reference.
I kept it short.
If they like it, they can take it
to their burrows, smear it with
eye paste, pin it like a beetle.
See how the dead shell glistens?
See the remarkable
bent and crippled legs? (It’s nice
when they hold so still.) Then,
I will go out and write
in the absence that’s left.
I hope they like this poem.
Copyright © 2025 Greg Philby
what they said about my poem
Copyright © Greg Philby
They run their eyes
like marbles
down the text,
rolling around the Ss and
sliding down the Ys, then,
leaning on their knuckles,
they say “not bad,” “I’d change
a couple things,” “do you
write a lot, do you?” “I like
that one part,” “you should
meet Ray, he’s a really
good writer,” “it doesn’t rhyme,”
“my poem on my daughter got published
in the newspaper, I should show it to you,”
“I’m not really into this kind
of stuff,” “it’sgoodIlikeit,” “you should
write about horses, I like horses,”
“thanks for sharing,” “it’s a pretty
font, what is it?” “hmmm,”
and I shake the paper out
like a napkin
to fling off the crumbs
though the water stains and
fly specks remain
and I tuck it into my black binder.
Copyright © 2025 Greg Philby
Bukowski, defiled
Copyright © Greg Philby
They think since he’s
decades dead
and safely rotted,
they can squeeze all
the kick and pus
from his words,
brush and powder them up
into soft new covers
that sit with mewly pastel faces
and timid spines
on the rack.
He is not pretty enough
for a dress like this.
He is too ugly
to be washed.
And he is too dead
to piss and cuss
about it,
or to pour alcohol
through his wretched head
and leak slurry despication
out his pen.
They have him sweetly ribboned
in his hell.
This is why
one can not die.
Copyright © 2025 Greg Philby
I Feel a Poem Coming On
Copyright © Greg Philby
I feel a poem coming on.
My eyes have drawn their blinds.
I’ve wandered off with glowing lanterns
deep within my mind.
I’m numb to all the earth avows
with mental fires lit.
My pencil end burns red with heat,
a writer’s cigarette.
Are you still here? I cannot tell.
I’m lost in introspection.
I feel a poem coming on
or else a bad infection.
Copyright © 2025 Greg Philby
Stress Song
Copyright © Greg Philby
My brain is wound
up tight, up tight
bones scrape bones
there’s no soft left.
My soul is wound
up tight, up tight
writhing ravens
gouge my chest.
Bones scrape bones
ravens wrest
bones scrape bones
there’s no soft left.
Copyright © 2025 Greg Philby
Stars
Copyright © Greg Philby
In this silky swoon of night
The stars hang hard as rain.
One of you is Sara Teasdale;
One of you is Twain.
One of you can make me small;
The other, sing my pain.
If e’er I feel content and strong,
I shan’t look up again.
Copyright © 2025 Greg Philby
Weldon Kees in the Dark
Copyright © Greg Philby
Dusk, late summer.
In my hands
the works of Weldon Kees
pale and sink beneath
the gloom/their fine bones
and drumming bodies
submerge/silver bubbles
still caught in their throats.
One line, for an instant,
wriggles frantic against
the trawl of night.
Now, dark. The poet
silted into his seabed;
his poems drifted
off the shelves;
his passion, still restless
this night, bumps along
his lonely reefs
of soul.
The grove, silent.
A single leaf cracks
from its stem and spins
on its madness, wending
down, down but/in the
dark there is no bottom
and there is no leaf
and it leaves no space
behind.
I wander into the
shoals of trees/
in my hands,
his empty jacket.