Do you live in Lynchburg?
If you do, come on by the Hill City Writers. Talk about a kind group of people.
I dragged in a real dying cat of a piece yesterday (the preface), which in turn relinquished a dead frog of a poem. The dying-cat-as-preface coughed it right up on everyone’s desk, and then expired with a metaphorical meow.
Everyone sat around, and said….
“Well, maybe it’s me, Josh….”
Here’s a reworked version. (And bless you guys, you’re gems, you really are.)
Pre-Apocalyptic Poetry
What on earth am I up to? I’m not quite sure. I guess I’m trying to tell the Truth. It’s out there, floating around, not constructed, not arbitrary, although often elusive.
To be precise, I’m trying to transcribe the Truth, thinking out loud, catching it by its tail, and trying to make sense of it for me. If it happens to be of service to you, too, I’m most gratified.
I can’t offer advice. But I can puzzle along with you.
It seems to be showing up in poems lately, in semi-processed form. It seems to be important (to me, at least).
The world is still in peril from where we left it last week. What part did I play? What part DO I play?
This “Pre-Apocalyptic Poetry” is my rummaging around to find out.
A Pivotal Moment (The Previously Dying Cat Prologue)
The salsa dancers lounging on the nocturnal patio wouldn’t have noticed the ripple in my eye. Submerged ideas rarely ruffle the surface.
A classic cynical suburbanite in my early 30’s, into science, intellect, and creative entrepreneurship, I was out on the town. My spiritual garden was dead. Not from choice - I had looked and looked for signs of life - but dead it remained. I certainly wasn’t trying to revivify it on a Friday night.
Suddenly, something happened.
Do you remember sledding as a kid? Growing up in Maryland, snow was a cause for elation. I'd sled and sled and sled until, one day, the snow would wear thin into a patch of mud, and things would grind to a halt. I'd look sadly at the emerging earth over the plastic edge of the toboggan. It would stare back, gritty.
Time's up, buddy.
I didn't know that could happen again, on a larger scale. Until it did. This time, the concept – or rather, the absence – of God (or Meaning or something) looked back at my frostbitten disbelieving face with its five o clock shadow.
The world was still chugging along, but something was nagging at me.
Then everything broke.
I still don't know what I think. But, this quiet moment of realizing “middle” seems important to mention. My generation has been tinkering with the traditional order, and reality itself. We’ve pulled so many pieces apart. Can they be put back together? How will this experiment end?
This is a poem about the moment my sled stopped, and I realized that if there’s no Up, everything is a Down (disguised as a Middle).
Has your sled stopped, too?
Sodium Vapor
The sodium vapor street lights
That lit summer basketball games so long ago
Still glow orange in the harsh city nights
Minus the childhood laughter
A reflection of something ignored
A light in this world
A mall Santa
Santa’s Helper
for the real Santa Light of the World
Standing by, standing by
Waiting
Sort of like a tofu Redemption in the meantime
Until it's time for the real thing
Showing me by halves
Lining the sleeping boulevard at 1 am
Casting a pallid glow
on rain-slicked emptiness
This is not it
I rattle along in a car full of ghosts
Who echo and say “remember when”
The night on the town would have been
a TV special for elephants
If they had their own version of National Geographic
(Translated to British): “And now, in this coral reef of humanity they call a dance floor, among the plumage and odd rituals for attention, a peculiar male is being stubborn, and doesn't offer to buy the lady a drink. Perhaps he's cheap, or maybe shy, or both. She walks away.”
I stepped out on the porch
Bathed in sweat and sodium orange
Trying to talk with mixed success to the other people who tried to be cool
They were seasoned and fading and skilled
I hit a boxer with permission and warning
“I've been practicing like you taught me. Can I hit you?”
Spilled his drink
In my dedicated enthusiasm
Bought him another
I sure felt like an idiot, but...
I lived to tell the tale
Pulled out my compass
And it said North was that way
But also this way
And it could be over yonder
Huh, that's funny, is it broken?
Once I made sand art when I was eight
Poured the pretty grains color by color in layers
into the jar
And shook it
to an ugly gray
Of silicate mixed fruit punches
(The sign on the soda fountain said “Just because you can doesn't mean you should”)
And now, among mid-grade perfume and sweat
I heard the sound of a car in the mud or ice
The rubber shriek of futility
Stuck
I shook my head and looked at the concrete
and the makeup on their unattainable faces
and the drinks that weren't jolly
but pretended to be
neon blue promises with a cherry floating along towards happiness, or at least forgetfulness
Of something we'd rather not articulate on a Friday night (or ever), and might not even be able to in this place where social graces smile with gritted teeth
and beautiful eyes sparkle like razors
I heard the shriek again
realized there was no car
Only a quiet voice pointing out that “Yes, the compass is broken”
And this vast plain of middle
Middle middle middle
No up
All down
February mud forever
under a leaden sky
But how did I know this?
Does that mean there's an Up?
I tried to forget the question
By ducking back inside the dance club, a cocoon of freedom and fun with strobe lights and glamour
A moon bounce for the 21+
Isn't that the point of this life we've built? Freedom? Thank “god” for Friday, whoever he is.
The music was almost loud enough
At last the doormen were bidden goodbye
And my footfalls had turned into a cranking starter and then a cheap engine rolling down Walter Reed Drive
The question came creeping again
A lone hitchhiker
The kind that kills and destroys everything you've built
(Be it right or wrong, the Truth doesn’t care)
with a word
or worse
with none at all
I thought I saw something or someone
Standing roadside
Simply, silently, watching
On the sidewalk
Was it Jesus? Buddha? Mickey Mouse?
I don't know, it's hard to see
Traveling at the neighborhood posted
35 miles per hour
On the empty boulevard
Washed in sodium orange of empty
I passed the shadow
On my way home
to
Nothing.
The cat in the box is half dead and half alive until you look.