Back to Where It All Began*: Hybrid Prose Poem
Who Drives You to the Page: who was the first?
My page was too white
My ink was too thin
The day wouldn’t write
What the night pencilled in — Leonard Cohen
Were we six or seven
Jane,
when we got up on the stage
the silver cassette player
with Jennifer Warnes
taking Manhattan —
what heaven was that place, that place we’d never been, didn’t attempt — ah, the pen has begun to itch — nights are passing faster now — and we no longer have our stage —
hands crossed over knees
back outwards
the imagined crowd
till the words simply drown out
the rest
— for me, anyway — spun down longing central, waiting for a train to board, to take on taking on took the last suitcase that held monolithic typewriter — till the pages grow longer — till the hypergraphia sets in —
this dark long
Poet sets up an altar
for me
back to where it
began
with huge connected
perforated printing pages
huge awkward lines
and scribbles
to feel
