There is one pothole
every Friday away
that a mid level tech
geek is happy to stray
into, for fear of cha-cha
-ing with his third floor
neighbour over his late
night strolls over to Mrs. Verma’s
cottage and slipping,
rather quietly so
out of his shoes and into
an arm as slender as Mrs. Verma’s
and hairy as Mr. Verma’s
could be. While this transpires
at 2 am, the POV my
8th floor apartment
cigarette ashes fall into the pothole
and I am sucked into
like once before
into a cycle of rebirth and grief
but it’s not that serious
I’m only seventeen
I’ m only walking amongst the trees
just like Arthur wrote
well, come to think of it
didn’t Rimbaud die at 24?
What a bummer that must have been
to have been loved before your time
to have been dead before you were loved
to have known fear and rejection
before you died, for the world couldn’t
understand what this pothole meant
ans neither could you
Rimbaud didn’t die for his sins
he teetered at the brink
and broke when he couldn’t
keep the pieces together anymore
like a puzzle in a kid’s room
he fell into the bin
to never again emerge
and walk this earth in any livin’
shape or form. Arthur Rimbaud
who died at 24, wasn’t serious
at 17, and that
was the greatest gift of all
a man in pain, a soul redeemed.
It’s merely a pothole they say
just be happy and stay that way
easy comes and easy goes
but sometimes the rougher gales wait
and all the Rimbaud’s are washed away
every poet is dead in his wake
every stray shoe points
the pothole’s way. If you must stare
into the rift, do so with a friend
to pull you aside, and bring you back
let her know CPR and maybe even
love’s marshmallow pathways.
Far too many Arthurs have died
Far too many Franks have hurt
for a Rimbaud or a Kafka
better men that we are
who deserved their lives
and not the pothole’s cruel fray.
The techie emerges, hiding
in the night’s obscurity
but he can feel the Pryings
judging gaze, a third floor balcony
an eighth floor weirdo
so he must put on a show
a tamed lion always shaves his mane
and just like that, the nightcrawler
scuttles like a guilty Frankenfiend
one more Arthur may be dead
but we are all living today,
for Rimbaud dipped his ink in gold
and is now a Warhol
who must suffer, for we are fearful
to see into the pothole
lest it should swallow us
and only leave a mediocre trail.
Great men don’t always die great deaths
sometimes great women just
fall or cut, like a Super 8 reel
straight to their demise
and we bury them, singing
songs in their praise and wishing
that we could have been friends
with the weirdo who severed his ear
and called himself Van Gogh
the Pryings are whispering
amongst themselves. They know
I know their secret. Okay! I
don’t wish to jump off this ledge.
I’m not a Rimbaud or Van Gogb
but then I hear the catchphrase
“You don’t have to be that great,
to die by our hand. Now stare
into the pothole man and whee,
you are off to a better place.”
All the neighbours hear is a Thwack!
A lot of me to clean up the next day
such is the pothole’s way.
