Untoward

1.

Poetry is a lie ...

but it cakes to the brain

and poems are portal guns

[tab10]firing synapses between[/tab10]

meaning and meant.

 

2.

in fact:

[tab10]My memory is eidetic, and[/tab10]

I am the speaker—

no—

narrator

that is, the driver was new,

the cab was an Impala,

black-coloured and doomed roadkill.

[tab10]Two writers can’t crunch numbers,[/tab10]

punch Canadian kilometres

into the GPS that shoots

lasers at the moon;

we couldn’t puncture holes in the distance

from broken-down Bank

to the docks.

[tab10]My right brain passed out[/tab10]

when I left the pub,

stopped reading writing.

[tab10]I had too much,[/tab10]

too bad,

called Robert Kroetsch

Robert Crotch

to his face.

He told me,

[tab10]Why can’t words mean what they say?[/tab10]    

[tab10]My cell had no signal[/tab10]

in Dead Deer, Alberta,

so Rob hollered down the archives,

hailed a ride home.

We were cabbing in tandem,

in same space, when the turret’s red light fired.

[tab10]And I was in a taxi-within-a-taxi.[/tab10]

[tab10]I laughed and no one laughed back;[/tab10]

there was Kroetsch’s better brain

caked to me.

Was the climax the contact of cars,

the FUCK! before the BANG!,

the optimism that trailed

as a tailgating ambulance

after crashing on a side street

against the highway?

[tab10]Did the action fall[/tab10]

when I crossed the bridge,

toward home and

my own crossed synapses?

[tab10]Drew tells me I’m in shock;[/tab10]

makes sense, can’t sleep

desperate to find a newspaper

that isn’t schlocked together

at both ends

by the J-schoolers who call

English Lit a dumping ground for flunkies,

to read something.