So She Like Gets This Letter From Her Dad Like 6 Months After Her Birthday
My dearest Julie,
Did you ever get that drawing I sent you? Pretty good, wasn't it?
A thousand light-years from here I climbed to the rim of Yasur volcano
on Tanna in Vanuatu and I peered into its fiery stink. I looked down
at my feet at a red Coke can. I saw a postcard someone had dropped.
I picked it up. A terrific photo of some very severe ice-covered mountains.
On the other side was written But what you don't like where you are
you won't like here even more. Only this. I wish someone had sent it to me.
Today they showed us the old film A Scanner Darkly. Check it out.
It's about addiction and prevarication. Everybody's itch has everybody
doing it. Tell your mother it's about photography. There's one scene
our addled heroes' car is broken down on this shitty California highway.
They lift the hood. They are busy studying the hot engine busy doing
their best to clamor and convict a mechanical part of intentional malice.
Finally exhausting all paranoid leads one shouts Don't blame the drugs!
It was the moment we'd all been waiting for. Sure. We all cheered.
Afterwards a discussion of the million drugs. For what? The beaters
we drove. This hunger for explanations beyond conventional wisdom.
Hope the 12th grade is OK and you're making friends with good people.
Happy birthday. I love you. Dad
I posted this here poem #20 at least 310 days ago. Kristen. I thought of you.
ReplyDeleteThat has something in a leap of faith still rising, to settle on a chance difference. Still a stunner.
ReplyDeleteYou're right. It is a leap of faith.
DeleteThank you Rob - I love this :) I'm going to print it out and put it on the wall. Thanks heaps:))
ReplyDeleteYou are kind, dear Kristen. This poem has had versions of it for 6-7 years now. From way back in the days when I was lawless on my own! The penultimate line is the most recent - and it's more a leap of irony than one of faith. The crap topics we were given in school. (As if the education system needed proof that the job it had done on our heads had finally made us bloom like flowers...before the workplace would kill us.) It's still very rough around the edges, but I love it.
DeleteRob, I like the way it's had numerous versions over many years - from your lawless days too ... and yes more a leap of irony than one of faith. The fact that it is still a bit rough around the edges is part of its appeal for me. Have you had it (or earlier drafts of it) published anywhere?
DeleteGlad that you (all) like it. As for wider outside publication of this (or anything), I have been writing on the perimeter for so many years now, that I confess my imagination fails me at the juncture of sending stuff out and waiting on the whim of strangers. Crikey, I have thousands of poems. After I'm gone, some kind soul may edit them - and if not, then my descendants will have lots of fun arguing about what the hell I meant!
Delete...since removed the penultimate line. Was silly. Even for a Dad. :)
ReplyDelete