Gravedigger

Shit.

I may have, in fact, just committed a grave error.

I need to backtrack a bit, in order to explain how I arrived at this place. I’m a superstitious man, and everyone likes a bit of a conspiracy theory, so I’m not entirely sure my sub-conscious isn’t scheming against me. Or for me, as the case may be.

I was explaining to a whip-smart colleague of mine today a little about the mechanics of my own personal creative process – those in the know may find and replace “process” in this sentence with “melodrama” – that occurs from time to time within the confines of my skull. His was a yeomanly effort to maintain goodwill and good cheer in the face of my onslaught when another colleague approached off the horizon to distract my natterings and ramblings and buy him both breathing room and space.

But until that time, I was speaking of an old poem of mine that detailed the amazing power my poems had to affect reality. Sounds awesome, doesn’t it? I’ll tell you more about it some other time...

So I started thinking that I needed to find the poem. Clearly, if I couldn’t find the poem, there’d be no future blog entry. This would defeat the mad drawings and notes and scribblings I had made while ideas popped into my head while I described some aspects of my creative process to my colleague the yeoman, who, I was sure, was absolutely ready to tell me that 2 plus 2 equals 5.

You know, I think I owe this fellow a coffee. Or two.

I get home and do home things for a while and I realize I can’t take the pressure. I’ve got to see if I can find this poem. I can’t remember the bloody title of it. There are some things you need to know: my desk at work is a wreck. My desk at home is a ruin. I have never been accused of being organized, though I have stressed that my headspace is less cluttered.

When I say things like that, you should know that I’m lying.

Once upon a time, I had printed out my writing to bind into a couple of duo-tangs on steroids. In all that time, various moves and personal incarnations, I managed somehow to hang on to those beasts. This is good, because I am completely and utterly afraid to attempt to find electronic versions of my writing because I don’t believe they exist any longer. While my desks and mind are almost hopelessly cluttered, my book shelves are not, which in this instance is fortuitous as I had plainly treated these “‘roid-tangs” as books and plunked them in with all kinds of other writing.

Allow me that small conceit.

I go and grab these books and instantly, and I mean instantly, I am taken aback. I dated all of my work in those days. The last date that I put on a poem in these books is March 1, 1993. The earliest date that I put on a poem is December 4, 1988.

You know what’s unreal?

I can remember precisely where I was when I wrote that December 4 poem. From looking at that page and reading that poem, I remember the house I was in, even the feeling I had when I wrote it, the feeling I had when I showed it to my friend Anne who was unbelievably supportive and enthusiastic. Forgive me; I realize I’m doing a sort of stream of consciousness thing at this moment.

To the task at hand: can I find the very poem I will need for a future blog? Absolutely. No question. I find it, and I find that at some point in the last 17 years, I’ve re-titled it. Who knew? I also find out, which is a fascinating glimpse into a brain 17 years younger, that I printed out each and every version of every poem I put in these books. Only when I leafed through the book did I recall doing that.

I made copies of those books and handed them to a select group of people, you know.

As I was reading them, I happened upon one of my many epigrammatic pieces. My main strength was short punchy poems. I had a quick read and before I knew it, I had made it better. You'll have to take my word for it that it's better.

That’s my grave error. I cannot afford to keep on digging up old works to do some weird kind of artistic autopsy on them followed by yet more gothic weirdness in the form of a Herculean Frankensteinian procedure to bring them back to life because I cured what killed them.

Nope. No way.

I can’t tell you this story and not provide the poem I worked on in its latest form. I mean, I could, but that'd be the work of an ass. It was written November 12, 1992, in Ottawa. Very few of my writing took place outside of this city. That’s all the background info you get.

Read it and make of it what you will.




Trust

It is the quiet
as the wine glass leaves your fingertips
it is the blur
as it ends over ends past me
it is the shatter
as blue fragments fly
it is the silence
as the quiet settles in.