Caught Hard
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1
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dull dark day
desperately dawns
clinging coldly
to night clouds;
little mists of mares
floating doggedly
over murky dreams
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I am fighting,
fighting so hard
for an empty room –
a glass trophy
it can’t last,
it mustn’t last,
this fighting alone,
on the dew-wet grass
so close to home;
with the fleshly born
morning sunrise
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just by being here
to see the fight
you become the fight;
another shadow-boxing affair
reflected from bottles
reflecting across walls
fighting for each word you speak
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I am dying
that everyday death
we each die
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fighting in only
the best of surroundings,
soundings & singers,
all dying in fighting –
fighting off fits of laughter
I feel exploding
each inner pondering
like a sledge hammer
smashing each happy stone
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returning sensations
of pleasure
white in the night
feeling close while
coming to an end
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caught hard
up in the air
without a handful of much
just loose strings of things
of other satisfied things
to keep me for giving in
to consuming everything
in one final bite
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2
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I’ve heard the hangman
many times today;
why do I feel so cold
a-sway in the summer sun?
swing peacefully
in the hangman’s hot breath?
he’s trying to melt me down
so I can be sold
in bits
and
pieces
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3
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many times,
screaming inside
he cannot bear
to have me sway
to any breath
but his:
up the stairs
up the stairs
no one cares
except for the hangman
filling his pockets
with meltings
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I am free
to fall
I am free
to get up
I am free yet feel so lost
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if I am not a fossil
why do I feel so old?
if I am not reincarnated
why do I feel so unborn?
tiny & afraid
summer sun waiting
for someone to touch
if I am not wisdom
why do I feel so foolish
out of these words?
am I the end of time
drizzled with smiling sun
in your early morning suddenness?
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if I am not dynamite
why do I feel like fighting
every time I think of you?
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the sun cannot melt
through to the middle
yet I feel myself slipping
up the stairs
up the stairs
away from the sun
that needs me melted
so we can start winter
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4
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the hangman has seen me crying
the hangman has been free dying
to reach out & cut the rope
to end my all-day dangling
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if I am not a hanged man
why do my feet
never seem to touch the ground?
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if there is no rope
around my neck
what holds me in place
keeping me from falling?
Jan71/Jan73/July74/June76
Welcome to alliteration 🙂 All those d’s, c’s, m’s are perfect for waking you up in the morning. Looking back now I see how this piece reflects some of the anti-materialist hippie counterculture of the early 70’s. People fed up with working hard for nothing – employee of the month with no real sense of satisfaction. Hearing songs about that by pop stars who became millionaires.
I was/am not a particularly pugnacious guy so all this boxing/fighting imagery seems more like masculine bravado. There was some inner turmoil often both fuelled by & hidden by alcohol: “another shadow-boxing affair/ reflected from bottles.” The turmoil was creative: what can I write to make me rich; it was also sexual – the fight to express myself & not be judged.
This piece moves with a looping of repeated images that eave in & around each other, the hangman, the sun, melting, fighting in different combinations as it literally fights to find cohesion & meaning. I see it now as the struggle for identity – to find one in the world around me.
‘your early morning suddenness’ seems to hint of a romantic involvement that didn’t exist at that time. Fear kept me emotionally frozen, this is what was to be melted so I could enter the world with the cold mask of creativity to protect me.
All these rhetorical questions spring from the hippie search for self – where you going Billy? How many roads must a man walk down? The hangman makes a return here but in a less playful way. Then in that last verse we get rhyme! Something that I generally avoided then (& now).
The piece is stitched together from various pieces as the dates at the end indicate. I had them in note books & felt they resonated with each other. The ’74 take was when I pulled them together. ’76 was the final edit for the chapbook & I resequenced them for flow & to create the illusion of depth.
https://topoet.ca/2019/04/26/caught-hard-1971-76/
I do have a limited number of the original Distant Music chapbook for sale for $25.00 each (includes surface mail postage). Send via the paypal above along with where to send it.
TOpoet 