Rooftop Poetry Club - Marcus Scott

Marcus Scott

Bio:
Born in the small town of Albany, New York, Marcus Scott came to Buffalo State College originally to become a sexual therapist before he decided to major in his real passion, Print Journalism, and with minors in Theatre and Psychology he plans to one day own and operate his own big-budget alternative magazine, publish his poetry, and top the New York’s bestseller list.

In his freshman year, the over-achiever also started the Silver Screen Association, a Buffalo State College organization. When he graduated in 2005 from Albany High School, Marcus was given title as Poet Laureate for his contributions to the school’s Inkblot Poetry Club and its magazine. That year, he also appeared in Albany’s Poets In The Park, being chosen over hundreds of students and one of four poets chosen. Marcus's poetry has appeared in a variety of local publications, including but not limited to Inkblot, The Fahari-Libertad and Elm Leaves.

Poems:

Blue for night, amber for dawn

A veil of undisclosed secrets
The chatterbox confessions of teen angst opens like a hand grenade
This is life during wartime
And you, you are God—or a close call
The Leper Messiah in the science of my dreams
The heavenly father in the grainy night sky
A sight that only eyes away from the severe gleam of city lights and chrome
Can truly see
You are a remedy to the sable fallacy that was once my chi…
This is no contest
For words can not explain the brilliance and the cacophony of your soul,
Which cries like a songbird on the eve of spring
You, you’re something else.
And I can’t say the things that I could have said before,
Like the way I would hold you until the storm gave out…
Murphy’s Law stampedes through my head
And the minute I find interest in you—you’ll find someone else.
I tell myself that this will only escalate into a mere allusion or,
For lack of a better term, castle in the sky
Because the only angels I’ve seen
Have been feathered white in the seasons where suicide hikes
And where the nights glow tangerine from chandeliers on Christmas trees…
Winter, and if you’ve studied the Northeast, it’s no joyride.
These figures are ice cold, stone cold
Impressions of earth before and after we came into the existence
Each snow flake has a different visage—
Circumventing the phantasm of my fantasies
Lust accumulates into infatuation, like, love, passion, romance
And I sit here on my bed between the pillows and paper
Strewn across the fleshy tapestry of my lap, images of you rekindle
In short bursts of light—your broken smile: like a lost unicorn.
Throwing caution to the wind, can I say that you’re beautiful?
A coral mouth where a cracked smirk sits, like a vermilion wildfire
Your lips like a blood red rose, trickle open to engage me with a hesitant Kodak smile.
The freckles on your porcelain foamed face, like pink confetti or frosting,
These are what dreams are made of, and you are like a Botticelli angel.
The water colored chiaroscuro between the canvass and God’s fingertips…
And wisp of Gamboge hair rest on your scalp.
Your blond highlights freeze frame like a b-boy stance,
Or a pedestrian behind a caution tape line
Your skin foams like a magnolia Papaya whip sky in a t-storm
Where a face lies
And those eyes of yours shine like a star studded teal Tiffany diamond.
I stare into the Sfumato of the misty-illuminati embroidery of your face
My inner criminal devising master plans to capture this rare beauty.
But in this mole film, where God is the mole—I do not stand a chance.
Your voice, as pale as cirrus clouds gently rapping at my psyche’s door
And this is not forced.
These thoughts shadow box inside the concrete jungles of my heart
Constantly working the beat to be inspired by the luxuries of what I think love is, or like… or complicated.
Taking a snapshot of my soul through the sound bytes of the telephone.
You pace yourself like an Olympic runner before the smoking gun goes off
You are a mere episode of things: “Too good to be true.”
But wait, there’s more.
You are Saturn’s return and infinite wisdom accelerating through time
You’re beautiful, a cliché of the things that I can not have because of distance,
Because of fear, because of you, because of me
Simply because.
I ache at the mistakes I’ve made and will make and won’t….
Because I don’t have time to fix them or take back the things I’ve said
Or have done
Or will do
Or will not.
Can I say I’m restless?
Maybe, bored of being truly amazed at the creature you have become?
I’m a sloth,
In love with a mosaic, stardust Renaissance intelligentsia.
In like with a boy whose mane sparkles like a Tuscan sun
Infatuated with a kiss that I will never have…
But wait there’s more…
But you’ll have to wait, because I am still waiting to exhale.

Placebo Effects

I can see the ice in your eyes
Like a silver storm
You steer off into the distance and
I’m sure you understand me
But it’s like we meet at parallel lines
I’m trying to avoid all of the clichés
But you rip me up like Papier-mâché
And if I fell into another trance
I’d have to take a stand
Before the judge and jury
Hell may have no fury
But scriptures often lie
What price is it to crucify?
But I’m here and like a cipher
I translate the galactic clusters and the anemones
Into monochromes and poetry
But, still staring back at me
Is a photograph of paranoia and days off the coast of the marine
When I see it, it cuts deep into this heart like pie crust
Because I’m not wanted
So, I’ll cut my wrists and use my blood for war paint
Maybe, one day you’ll look me up in the papers and shed some tears
Riding trolleys through town square
My face will be with angels
By faith with be with you
Because what else do I have to give?
I don’t have wine red roses
Or champagne lifelines
And I don’t have life support
What else is there?
Between Eden and anguish
Between the landscape and the dreamscapes
Between Oceania and starlight
Between gossamers and atmosphere
I don’t have those luxuries
But I believe I have the cure.

Drop Your Weapon

“Drop your weapon,” they said
His stationary and petrified limbs reaching for his right back pocket
His faded Levi’s clutching his skim legs
“This is your last warning,” they recalled… or so they said
He had just come from the supermarket that night
His mother needed vegetable oil, red peppers, and French baguettes
For the Italian dinner she was preparing
It was a con. In fact, it was in celebration his acceptance into law school
He was going to be the world’s next hot-shot yuppie
And this was the night, a Friday night, in which he would past a local check point
And these strapping young and underpaid urban bureaucrats
Saw him as a means of making the night’s quota.
He was young and black,
Sported a fade
And he dressed in brown pastel,
Under his chocolate leather peat coat, russet loafers,
And auburn beret—
He called it “paperboy meets street glam.”
Dressed in obsidian black flak jackets like a Communist militia
They held their Sturmgewehr 44s, M1911 pistols and SIG SG 550—
Cocked their pistols.
He took his hand out of his pocket and raised his hands, harmlessly
A trigger was pulled, the spray of shellfire rampaged
At the crossroads of an intersection and the city’s main street
A buckshot of forty-two: fractured his flesh bone.
“Mom’s age,” he thought.
His blood was graffiti-ed on the floorboards
Of concrete jungles like an Jean-Michel Basquiat opus
The bullets were Lapis-lazuli to the Romans, his killers
As his tears mixed into the sanguine and pavement like kraters.
His last breaths ebbed and his ebony eyes tucked into his face, turned a milky white
Remnants of his youth like ashes on a beach
Was parked into the pavement of his ’88 Camry…
He was going to be the next Desmond Tutu or Lech Walesa
Lennon before the 80s
The Velvet Underground after “Heroin”
But now, his psyche flew like herons over ocean undergrounds.
Two weeks later, there was a shoot-out in a ghostbox only a mile from his departure
One of the criminals escaped
The officers said they were out of bullets.