Summer Blackout

typed on Royal typewriter – around 1977

Blackout 77

the fear

aware of the light

shapes the unseen

the fear

is being awakened

at the wrong trembling moment

to your own pulse

I gave in today

without a fight

without a second thought

gave in to nothing

being nothing

doing nothing

going nowhere

I gave up

my dreams & hopes

plans of a great future

that’ll never come true

all that’s left for me

is to relax into resignation

without bitterness

to keep on giving in

without a struggle

the plan now

is to sleep in

on all fours

to a snug shadow

of calm reserve

a smug disinterest

about the things

I once had to become

I’m getting old

the feel of fall

is colder in my bones

every year

I find it easier to drink

to forget old unfinished fears

than to make new motions

toward an altered shape

I find it easier

every time I empty another bottle

the next seems more welcome

not a proffered hope

but fleeting buffer

to remorse for old hurts

resignation

is a futile gesture

it is an admission

to pretentions

I once had a vision

a true sense of a special offering

a vision that proved to be

insecure self-indulgence

a vision

that kept me so in awe

I could never confront

even my basic mortality

no one is fooled but me

there is no dream revelation

just the dream

to black out the image

of the self-pitying

aging

drunken

unfulfilled visionary

with no shape

no broken heart

just his fear

the fear

last feeling of fall

has no vision

the unseen

is the futility of resignation

the inability to admit

that even as these words are

I intend to deny their meaning

this is not defeat

I have nothing to lose

this is not resignation

I have nothing to concede

the dream

will never change

that it may never come true

is the heart of the plan

the fear

pulse of the plan

has no end

………

Blackout 77

The title pretty much tells the reader what this piece is about – drinking, though it doesn’t get to the first sip right away. The first section is the opening of the bottle not of whiskey, but of the fear the propels the opening of the bottle in the first place. It also presents the idea of pulse as a protagonist.

At the time I didn’t connect my sense of resignation with alcohol. I didn’t realize it was a depressant – I saw it as a creative stimulant, as my escape from fears – particularly the fear of sexuality – getting drunk & acting out with other drunk men happened more than once. Opening a bottle with them was unzipping the pants.

There’s also some wordplay – ‘sleep in on all fours’ sleep instead of creep – ‘giving in without a struggle.’ This repurposing of cliches is a way to let readers be comfortable with seems familiar while letting them see it in a different way at the same time.

I wrote some of this while drunk in fact. Parts were in notebooks, some typed & the pieces assembled back in 1977. Some images were in the ‘original’ scribble – ‘sleep in on all fours, the feel of fall is colder in my bones’ – the sense of resignation, which I now see as melodrama, as opposed to real emotion, was more self-indulgence that anything else. Sections were made by sober reflections on what I had written.

The last verse was handwritten several times as I tried, at the time, to make my drunken handwriting legible. Looking back I think ‘the fear’ was not only of coming out but of the ‘sense of a special offering’ & how it would be fulfilled. Sadly I discarded all those original scribbles way back in 1977.