Failed or Abandoned?

It’s been a year or so since I wrote on this blog. Because:

  1. I’ve been writing other things that may or may never see the light of day but are better than this blog, or worse I guess, but that’s not for me to decide.

  2. I’ve been busy on my other project: JABBER.

  3. Blogging is passé, I suppose, at least in comparison to Substack, which all my writer friends seem to be on, though I can’t get it up to bug anyone with my own Substack newsletter. Chalk it up to the midwestern in me.

In an effort to justify the existence of this website and this page on it, I’m resurrecting old, failed, or possibly just abandoned writings that were supposed to be something. Seems right to start this series (?) off with an old poem draft from 2020 that stops abruptly and which I’ve made no effort to edit or expand. Let it live and die here. This may also be the last poem I’ve written or tried to write, having been busy committing the offense of prose for some time now.

Anyway, here it is in all it’s unfinishedness:

The dog has ceased twitching, shifted from dream to awake without, I imagine,

noticing the difference

but he’s giving me that look right as I’m midway through this YouTube celebration

of Ciaran Carson’s life and work

my favorite poet died just over one year ago, Derek Mahon following almost to the day

not unlike when

each of the Ramones died as if someone said “1-2-3-4!”

 

I find the video on my phone, plug in the earbuds I don’t enjoy

that have woven into my every day,

fish the bags and keys and dance

over the dog too stoked by the thought of good smells

to not be underfoot.

 

We’re outside—I’ve missed two beats, am suddenly at the start

of this poet—whose debut collection has been on my shelf

the better part of this year—reading “Gallipoli”

and I want to say I’m back in D.C. in 2007

listening to the man on stage bring the house down

reading the lines at an accelerating pace

until the devastating last words (though

when I listened, years later, to a recording of the event

Carson read slowly, letting every syllable

have its moment, patient, like his poems)

but that’s for the Frank O’Hara copycats

of which I am one, though not today—I am not transported

to a smoky jazz club—Lady Day is long gone.

 

I’m walking my dog in Chicago.

The streets are not as I would like.

I’d hoped for a quiet walk through the fall colors

and to enjoy the online celebration

while my dog searches for

the perfect place to shit.

But garbarge trucks and

FedEx vans and

Amazon Prime deliveries

are making too much noise.

I can’t hear

even with my earbuds in

and my dog hates the hiss

of the truck as it creeps along

our block, and the music from

the trucks is not to his taste.

 

He’s changed routes three times already

zig-zagging, sniffing, catching a start

from the clatter and the laughing

Loyola University students out

without wearing masks

even though we’re still deep

into this pandemic. I give

wide berth as they pass,

don’t want their COVID, their

marijuana stink, their

laughter to drown out

whatever poem we’re on—something

from “On the Night Watch” I think.

 

And we get to Devon

the street that separates
one neighborhood from another

the one I live in

not quite better

the one to the south

possessing better smells

or so says my dog

who’s outright insisting

we cross this busy road

unaware that more trucks

are ready to cut us in two—

where’s his fear now?

 

And here we are in Edgewater.

Flower pots and front porches

that’ve seen easier days,

VOTE signs in the postage stamp lawns,

suspicious women eyeing me—

or is it my dog?

It’s him—he’s setting up

to piss on some shrub

that she likely devoted days

to keeping alive, and here

is this beast of the Earth

ready to do as he pleases

right on the green

having already claimed 

a dozen fronds and patches of grass

so I know he’s dry, try to explain

to the woman now directly

leering at me that there’s nothing

he’ll let loose that’ll upset her shrub

but that’s no consolation.

 

We beat it back the way we came

after sufficient

 

 And so it stops. After sufficient what? Clearly, I had something in mind. No idea what, it being 2+ years since I wrote it. And yeah… nothing so great here, though the old Vince— the one who spent hours editing his poems— would have found some lines or phrases to to revise. Alas, we hardly knew him.