#8: Kerouac lost

Looking for Kerouac

From the 29th floor the city flickers
a glimmering expanse of light and movement:
fluid ribbons of cars, taillights warm with red glow,
glass towers pass bright sweeps of colour
from pane to pane. Neon and dancing.

This is not Kerouac’s city — this glittering gem,
this light-washed spectacle of clean and reflection.
Constant and shining, opaque veneer of newness.
There is no sooty shadow, no soiled alleyways.

Where are his dirty corridors? The crimson
confessions pooled in shadows, bottles and breath
soured from marathons of words and raging.
The filth and fury and beautiful darkness?
Where are the broken bedsprings, the broken souls?

Gone. In this new and unbroken city bleached by light.
All darkness and dirtiness purified. Exorcized.

#3: Octopus lost

Oscar woke up confused. He didn’t know where he was. He looked up and down, to the sides and back — although this effort was exacerbated by the fact that he was horizontal and facing sideways. And stuck to the side of something. A tenacious tentacle twitched against cold metal. It appeared that Oscar was adhered to a chain link fence. Curious that. And Oscar was a curious cephalopod.

Cars whizzed above on a concrete roadway in the sky. It made Oscar dizzy just looking up at it with one eye. All brightness and blue sky and buzzing. But the sound was somewhat soothing given this predicament. Below, and much closer, was a roughened pavement of stones from a nearby construction site. It didn’t look like a very comfortable place to land. A lone straggly weed looked up at him from the other side of the fence.

Oscar breathed in. Cough. He breathed in again. Better. He opened his other eye wide to take in the situation. All eight arm present — although in a deplorable state: fluffy rose now matted to a pink paleness, white dirtied to grey. No matter. It’s nothing that a little soap and water and fluff-dry couldn’t mend.

Now to the matter at hand: extrication from this metallic inconvenience.

Octopi have a uncanny way of getting out of tight spaces. Ask anyone. The lack of a skeleton can be invaluable. And their ability to perform complex reflex actions without even involving the brain is uncanny.

Hoping to remain inconspicuous, Oscar waited for the cover of darkness to make his move. And although he was a highly intelligent invertebrate, he didn’t even have to think about it.

In the morning Oscar was gone.

#2: Submissions of loss

It’s been more than a year (possibly longer) since I’ve made a submission to a literary journal. I have fallen out of practice, lost that rhythm of creating, submitting, re-writing, re-submitting. At times I have wondered if I can even write anymore. How disquieting it can be to look at the words you’ve published in the past and wonder who that person was, that writer. And did you ignore those voices long enough to have them bugger off in search of a more hospitable host, leave you indefinitely?

Writing about loss often presents a paradox: is it so easy to write about because it is inherently personal, and yet exquisitely painful to write about because it is inherently personal. And the finished product can walk that taut line between the melodramatic and the matter-of-fact. Both sides equal suicide.

This afternoon I dug up some poems that I wrote very soon after signifiant losses. These poems were never submitted to publications; they needed distance away from the events. Time to allow for a more critical eye to find that balance, to clear away any drama or indifference.

So I spent some time with four fairly heavy poems and submitted them to Arc. We’ll see how it goes. Right now, it doesn’t matter if they’re rejected. What matters is that I submitted them.

A good pen won’t let you down

Be kind to your pen