Rinse, Repeat
(A winner of the HCR 15th Anniversary Prize)
“This
is the first world we live in,
there is no second.” (Charles Wright)
I’m
afraid to die
lacking
legacy, a shelf
full
of bottled ships.
A
journey made alone,
deserted
at a bus-stop
on
the eroded edge
of
Anytown, a flock
of
angels blinding me
with
plumes of light.
The
wind blows fresh grit
in
my eyes; hard to see
inside
myself when I blink.
No
point denying it:
luck
will run out
long
before I find the
ticket-stub
to nowhere
deep
in my pocket.
Who’s
to say I haven’t
been
here before, maybe
floundered
around
the
outskirts of Tombstone,
Arizona,
its rough-
and-ready
saloons, where
the
smallest of bones
in
your body break.
You’d
think I’d learn, resist
the
urge to return for another
round
of spiritual abuse.
Decades
spent navigating
a
new life, only to be
abruptly
called home
for
the inevitable debriefing,
long
before I’ve managed
to
complete any treasure map.
There’s
enough proof of a
Grand
Design, alright,
the
Maker clearly amused by
the
absurd. But why not let a soul
win
once in a while? All the
shadows
and dust, charlatans and
self-help
books, and these bodies
so
regrettably built to drown
in
desire and defeat.
Blame
it on aliens if you
need
to, interstellar travel
such
a boring business,
passing
the time playing God
poorly
with a meager blue planet
tumble-weeding
through
the
Milky Way, too mundane
to
be anything other than
universal.
Mike
Madill's have appeared in literary magazines across Canada, including in The
Antigonish Review, The Fiddlehead, Event and The New Quarterly,
and one which was shortlisted for Freefall’s 2019-20 Poetry
Contest. As a finalist in the inaugural 2021 Don Gutteridge Poetry Award
Contest, he won publication of his debut poetry collection, The Better
Part of Some Time, (Wet Ink Books, 2022).
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