Un(en)titled

By Stan Rogal

Not this. Not this. Not this. What then? I started over & over. Not this. Not this. Certainly not this. As for this, no. Overheard at a house party one late drunken evening some strange someone remarked: well, yeah, writing a poem is not the same as kissing a baby’s bottom though there is all that crap to wade through, clean up, make presentable, y’know, make fit for polite public consumption. The advice is clear [nudge-nudge, wink-wink]: daffodils of thought(s); no porn, no Nazis. Imagine. Believe. Dream. Get your words’ worth. “… I wonder lonely as a crowd …” so on & so forth. Uh-huh. Those who expect me [anyone] to simply chew charcoal & spit out pictures [words] as if as if has/had nothing to do with it. Pardon me if it seems I have a few screws loose BUT some of us require serious intervention. We’re on the slang, if you get my drift. Abject criticism being no more than a knack & a knock. Bad preaching & worse theology w/porn the only commodity still behaving itself. Roof of the mouth mouth of the river; the teeth the tongue the lips. An exercise in ar-tic-u-la-tion. Let us name the curious & unfamiliar let us [what?] name [what? how?] it’s all a freaking blur we are inside of it we are swimming in it [i.e.: fish have no word for water]. “Pageantries” takes on “grease paint” for the stage. “Untraversed” becomes “adventurers” in the re-mix. According to the Living Tongues Institute every two weeks a language dies. What is science [or anything else for that matter] except a readily transportable or ‘highjackable’ body of concepts that poetry can plunder? The scientific method involves observation, applying rigorous skepticism about what is observed, even given that cognitive assumptions can distort how one interprets the observation [what?]. Is it not possible [then] that such an objective approach that frowns upon personal connections between the entities examined will harm people, turn them into miserable, unfriendly mechanisms w/o charm or humour? “Is it not possible,” asks Kierkegaard, “that my activity as an objective [or critico-rational] observer of nature will weaken my strength as a human being?” Sd Beckett: “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail Better.” Read on. It gets worse, not better, & is hardly the stuff of motivational workshops, yet, out of context, the message is bent to provide hope & inspiration to the ‘wholly’ indoctrinated ... “Daffodils of thought(s)” “Narrative Fallacies” “Epistemological anarchy” “The Law of Excluded Middle” … Freudians regard the death-wish as fundamental. Now, who’s about to hoist that particular flag & dance around the campfire naked singing Kumbaya? Ha! Not this. Not this. Not this. What then? I started over & over. Not this. Not this. Certainly not this. As for this, no. The abstract critique is a reductio ad absurdum of methodological monism, meaning, “anything goes.” I took myself to Yaffa [a Halal restaurant on St. Clair Avenue East, the parking lot a habitat for unmoored shopping carts, tire-crushed plastic water bottles, soiled advertisement fliers, discarded disposable blue face masks & squawky seagulls trolling for food scraps] & wrote looking out a window feeling … erotic, oddly magnetic … decided [impulsively] to write a sophistic article in verse for the Jacobin-Anarcho-Syndicalist Review arguing both for & against radical centrism as a political philosophy. Or not. [Is it time, yet, I wonder, to give myself over to my evil nature, the whole blue funk of it, not just simply?]. Sigh. “Who’d become a buried creature of sly erasures.” Checked myself in, checked myself back out again. That kind of day.

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Missing (In)action

By Stan Rogal

I am nearing middle age : dry skin peels from my hand
alone in a furnished room with pee stains on my underwear
doctors bored a small hole into my skull
& shot it with electricity
            now when I answer the phone
                        an other’s lips are in the receiver
 
wherever I am I am what is missing
dirty as a glass roof in a train station
looking at me as if I masturbated
do I terrify?
 
they prescribed me a drug that slowed
the healing of wounds
these sent things whisper — 
            “dogs,” “fucked women,” “wisps of clouds”
Japanese lanterns float downriver
attended by rose petals
somewhere
            seven flights up     roaches & rats in the walls,
leaks in the ceiling, toilet runs, floor creaks
the cat’s pregnant, baby’s gone, the landlord
wants his rent  

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(excuse)​ The Dangling Conversation

By Stan Rogal

Dear ________, hello. It’s 5:15 a.m., the sky-blue
            of Pacific air after the fog has burned off & the…
                        …& the pale adobe pink of the Spanish-style rooftops…
What? It’s 5:15 a.m., dear _______, hello? Yes.
They do say Vancouver floats its poisons to the sea. I.
 
Hello, dear ________. It’s 5:15 a.m. I’m listening
            to little records on a funny compact boxy machine.
                        I’m drinking, it’s raining, I saw a plum blossom.
The lessons of quiet — Don’t Call Me! — in my
evil nature & the whole blue funk.  
 
Dear ________, hi. It is 7:15 a.m. Fucked til 7 a.m.
            now I’m late to work, though, I once — wait!
                        what does “once” mean? — slippage really
believes I killed through the ears: wait!
[will the “the” please identify itself please].
 
[as ________’s call on Thursday asking
            whether I knew that ________ had died]
                        by their own hand? of natural causes? by misadventure?
But they weren’t those people, only figures on a beach.
I’d light a candle & pray if I weren’t so afraid of snipers.
 
[ __________ said]: anguish is a language
           everyone speaks but no one listens to it, better
                       spit out your gum, better walk straight & tall
thE jay, pig, fox, ZebRa & my wolves quAck.
We fall as sparrow dust into the unknown river.
 
Dear ________, hello, It’s 8:15 a.m. First give up
            the meaning of words, & then water. Anyone who
                        is all right wouldn’t be coming in covered w/fog, no.
Oh, we’re knee-deep in this one, you & me.
Lost somewhere along the poem’s longest coastline.

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​Stan Rogal lives and writes in Toronto. Work has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. The author of 27 books, including 12 poetry, with lucky number 13 set to appear in the spring of 2025. He is left-handed and has never owned a smart phone, placing him squarely among the elite 8% of North Americans.