It’s been a year or so since I wrote on this blog. Because:
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.
I’ve been busy on my other project: JABBER.
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.