My column in this week’s Winkler Morden Voice and Altona Rhineland Voice newspapers.

NOTE: press two magnets together

Similar pole to pole

They will repel one another

No matter how hard you push

They will forever remain apart

You cannot force a bond

However,

If one turns around

They come together

jesus christ write about something different!
i have no damn idea what you mean.
you fucking do know what i mean.
ok well, suppose i do, what do you have in mind?
ANYTHING…literally anything different and new!

well look, i see before me neat rows of black
small squares with letters displayed in stark white;
these things from which i can create worlds
set like teeth recessed in an elegant, ergonomic case;
and i must be careful to avoid their stinging bite.

so as i tap away with thoughts distracted
words spring up before me now with life once absent
just like i was previously, back in a time when i wasn’t;

is it possible that some distant, inaccessible thought
spends itself in endless tappings to create such as I?
I who sit here seeking to create new, unthought things
an unknown homage to an unknowable, capricious force;
but ever do i instead form copies and cheap replicas
of things i have shaped before, like degrading clones
an embarrassment of riches hidden in the cloud

how is that you think?
hey, it’s still shit but it’s different shit than before
well, there’s something in this i suppose.

Orpheus did go to hade’s hell
to find his beloved Eurydice
and sang the dead back to life
until he walked out again free
with less than he had before
and a heart heavy as iron ore
but still he’d go back for more
if given the choice to do so
despite the pain of endless loss;
this is the curse of a blazing love
that it shall burn you alive
that it shall forever drive
a burdensome passion.

If any were to look my direction
You would see me straining to
Touch fair, far off lady wisdom
Her visage but a mystery in my heart
I cannot fathom nor plumb the depths of;
Will anyone help me with the task,
Kill the fear that crowds me in?
You have only to come near and ask.

And so we are ghosts

Trapped within glass

Seen as reflections

Transparent yet there

And the cruel irony –

We do not fly free

When the cage shatters

We simply vanish

As a vapor

Escaping into eternity