Falling Towards Oblivion Avenue
Life As It Is Now
A prevailing sense of unease
born of age and failure.
Diminishing prospects
in a time of excess and scarcity.
A criminal gesture from
the irritated driver of the passing car.
The utter silence
after the online confession.
The online chatter
after the belligerence.
The ascendance of the vapid
after the belligerent assertion
of unsubstantiated
assertions.
OBJECTS IN MIRROR ARE
CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR
Things are larger and closer in poems
than in the ordinary light of days:
the body of Hector, dragged around the walls of Troy;
the bodies of lovers, twisting in the winds of hell;
the body of Ophelia, drifting downstream;
The body of Jesus, unrisen, in the tomb where he lay.
Poems try very hard- sometimes, too hard-
to make you slow down and pay attention.
You see how important poems are
in ordinary light. So important they have
their own warm month in the land of the deal
in which to be ignored.
Pattern Language
At some point, you care
just enough to wake each morning,
make coffee, and drive to work-
whatever work there is-
and not swerve on the highway
into the concrete columns
of the overpass. Routine
is sometimes the world's
salvation of the otherwise damned.
Personal Narrative Arc as a Degenerative Orbit
We are all falling toward the event horizon
at different distances
at differing rates of acceleration.
Some disappear as newborns,
caught in a wave of congenital gravitons.
Others vanish at an anticipated actuarial point
in the undulating wave of data.
I feel elongated and distorted
and the parts begin to disappoint one another
routinely. The information becomes ever less
discernible as bursts of static
pulse through the nerves.
The energies and protoplasmic bits are drawn
to the crushing center where nothing holds
and the data field chirps off and is gone.
Words Against the Flood
Why should anyone write
as the species we write of
gyrates at the end of its time?
Words can't slow the glacial melt
or de-acidify the seas. Despite
their elegance, fervor, and fire,
the words effect no barrier
to physics and inexorable change.
The symbols will resolve
to mysterious patterns
pressed against decaying paper
or arranged as magnetic pulses
unreadable without the smashed
and voltage sensitive machines
that can't survive a little water.
A prevailing sense of unease
born of age and failure.
Diminishing prospects
in a time of excess and scarcity.
A criminal gesture from
the irritated driver of the passing car.
The utter silence
after the online confession.
The online chatter
after the belligerence.
The ascendance of the vapid
after the belligerent assertion
of unsubstantiated
assertions.
OBJECTS IN MIRROR ARE
CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR
Things are larger and closer in poems
than in the ordinary light of days:
the body of Hector, dragged around the walls of Troy;
the bodies of lovers, twisting in the winds of hell;
the body of Ophelia, drifting downstream;
The body of Jesus, unrisen, in the tomb where he lay.
Poems try very hard- sometimes, too hard-
to make you slow down and pay attention.
You see how important poems are
in ordinary light. So important they have
their own warm month in the land of the deal
in which to be ignored.
Pattern Language
At some point, you care
just enough to wake each morning,
make coffee, and drive to work-
whatever work there is-
and not swerve on the highway
into the concrete columns
of the overpass. Routine
is sometimes the world's
salvation of the otherwise damned.
Personal Narrative Arc as a Degenerative Orbit
We are all falling toward the event horizon
at different distances
at differing rates of acceleration.
Some disappear as newborns,
caught in a wave of congenital gravitons.
Others vanish at an anticipated actuarial point
in the undulating wave of data.
I feel elongated and distorted
and the parts begin to disappoint one another
routinely. The information becomes ever less
discernible as bursts of static
pulse through the nerves.
The energies and protoplasmic bits are drawn
to the crushing center where nothing holds
and the data field chirps off and is gone.
Words Against the Flood
Why should anyone write
as the species we write of
gyrates at the end of its time?
Words can't slow the glacial melt
or de-acidify the seas. Despite
their elegance, fervor, and fire,
the words effect no barrier
to physics and inexorable change.
The symbols will resolve
to mysterious patterns
pressed against decaying paper
or arranged as magnetic pulses
unreadable without the smashed
and voltage sensitive machines
that can't survive a little water.
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Author's Note
Falling Towards Oblivion Avenue.
Napomo 16 : April 7-11.
Other stories by Gary Hardaway
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"Routine / is sometimes the world's / salvation of the otherwise damned."
*
The power, challenge, and limitation of poetry. Well stated. *
These really affected me--so insightfully and personally, in fact, that now I'm bummed out. *
Thank you, Amanda.
Thank you, John.
Thank you, Matt.
Beautiful collection of poems. The insight resonates with me. Good work, Gary.*
Thank you, Daniel.
I admire these poems, each of them. I especially like the irony in "Words Against the Flood," and I especially admire the word play in "Objects in Mirror...," where I kept thinking of the word "dead" instead of the word written, "deal." Nice. Also, the Yeats reference in "Personal Narrative..." juxtaposed with modern IT, "data field," chirping off. Interesting group of poems. Thanks.
Thank you, Dianne.
Good group.
Thank you, Sam.
I imagine you had just pulled over for a coffee in a diner after quite a drive to write these! Great stuff.
All good but taken with "Personal Narrative Arc as a Degenerative Orbit" because of the sustained tone and diction. Especially love the first 3 stanzas of "OBJECTS IN MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR" because of their specificity.
*
Thank you, Bill.
Thank you, Neil.