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The past tells me I won’t learn from it

Four poems by Kyle Manning

Kyle Manning makes musings out of Portland, Oregon, by way of San Diego.
Kyle Manning makes musings out of Portland, Oregon, by way of San Diego.

Hooked

  • We complicate
  • In savage glee
  • Casting many 
  • Lines into 
  • Lifeless waters
  • Hooking each 
  • Other’s hooks and
  • Pulling mad to
  • Never have the 
  • Tension reveal itself 
  • As the tangle of
  • Our wild dreams
  • Of darling desperation 
  •  

Spilled Milk 

  • I spilled milk
  • just to see
  • if I would cry
  • but instead I
  • watched childhood
  • pool on the floor
  • and poured a 
  • stiff glass 
  • of death with
  • a splash of 
  • sweet indifference 

Hosts

  • The past tells me
  • I won’t learn from it anyways.
  • Bad decisions like gods
  • Need vessels to share them —
  • The souvenir of my 
  • Favorite nightmare, 
  • Our lives quick knives 
  • Through thick silence.
  • Oh sharp tongues carve
  • Pretty language.
  • Our demons toast their hosts
  • Chasing the sun 
  • Around the globe 
  • Because we’d see too clearly
  • In the dark that 
  • Our bodies cast no light 

Spectrum

  • we find the 
  • best of ourselves
  • when dealing 
  • with the worst in others —
  • it’s always been about balance, life
  • a thought taught and come to be known — 
  • humanity rocks gently along 
  • the polarities of a cosmic seesaw,
  • morality pinches points
  • on the scale and demands 
  • reflection, like the child of
  • the second coming tugging at
  • your pants —
  • I judge only those in denial of 
  •    the pendulous predications
  • of a species swinging madly together —
  • I hope to know you’ll need me
  •    when you’re flailing
  • nearly as much as I hope 
  •     I can need you in
  • the fog of the spectrum,
  • when nothing pulls me nowhere 

Kyle Manning makes musings out of Portland, Oregon, by way of San Diego. He studied creative writing at the University of San Diego and discovered a passion for poetry a couple years after graduation. He’s been published in Thom Young’s Last Chapter Journal.

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Kyle Manning makes musings out of Portland, Oregon, by way of San Diego.
Kyle Manning makes musings out of Portland, Oregon, by way of San Diego.

Hooked

  • We complicate
  • In savage glee
  • Casting many 
  • Lines into 
  • Lifeless waters
  • Hooking each 
  • Other’s hooks and
  • Pulling mad to
  • Never have the 
  • Tension reveal itself 
  • As the tangle of
  • Our wild dreams
  • Of darling desperation 
  •  

Spilled Milk 

  • I spilled milk
  • just to see
  • if I would cry
  • but instead I
  • watched childhood
  • pool on the floor
  • and poured a 
  • stiff glass 
  • of death with
  • a splash of 
  • sweet indifference 

Hosts

  • The past tells me
  • I won’t learn from it anyways.
  • Bad decisions like gods
  • Need vessels to share them —
  • The souvenir of my 
  • Favorite nightmare, 
  • Our lives quick knives 
  • Through thick silence.
  • Oh sharp tongues carve
  • Pretty language.
  • Our demons toast their hosts
  • Chasing the sun 
  • Around the globe 
  • Because we’d see too clearly
  • In the dark that 
  • Our bodies cast no light 

Spectrum

  • we find the 
  • best of ourselves
  • when dealing 
  • with the worst in others —
  • it’s always been about balance, life
  • a thought taught and come to be known — 
  • humanity rocks gently along 
  • the polarities of a cosmic seesaw,
  • morality pinches points
  • on the scale and demands 
  • reflection, like the child of
  • the second coming tugging at
  • your pants —
  • I judge only those in denial of 
  •    the pendulous predications
  • of a species swinging madly together —
  • I hope to know you’ll need me
  •    when you’re flailing
  • nearly as much as I hope 
  •     I can need you in
  • the fog of the spectrum,
  • when nothing pulls me nowhere 

Kyle Manning makes musings out of Portland, Oregon, by way of San Diego. He studied creative writing at the University of San Diego and discovered a passion for poetry a couple years after graduation. He’s been published in Thom Young’s Last Chapter Journal.

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