Champion of Years
I should like to acknowledge the grid, the company,
the equipment, and most importantly strong drink.
This is the way we find ourselves, not in the narrow adobe
shanties, but rescued from such limited attractions and
blessed with whiskey, rum, and the whir of motors.
It’s hospitable, spending time today in a radiance of power,
the automatic shutter speed that replaces my retina.
There’s no freedom in South America, none. I’m the off peak
God of the freely and only. This is the report, the freedom
Of infinitely reaching the world with the data of the too well known.
Yes, I am equipped for rough expedition of the sort you
can barely imagine. I am often wholly unsympathetic to the Orient.
I’ve already been around it and known the satisfaction of
their occasional hardships. My intent is to escape the beginning:
one to another, one to one, distortion, isolation, darkness, and
pouring liquid into our ears to remember, remember the program.
Books are fading, which offers some consolation from the period.
“The written word” – that phenomenon sure had a minor peculiarity
of years. That fad is a portion of the minority which I have left behind.
Most men of action are readily their own book and
quick to answer a question, to join the conversation with knowledge of the world.
Ignore the gentle voice, the quiet manner over matter, the twinkling,
the lurking capacity for silent resolution. I am dangerous when
held. I am caused by crime, a champion, a protector, and legend.
I am amazing enough. I am no man’s land. I am one wild, wild report.
This poem originally appeared in The Grave of the Great Alley of Clarity Cats, an anthology of poetry written by Mike Giardina. The complete the anthology is available below:
Table of contents:
- Sun Shine Body
- On arrival in a lot of no civilization and plenty of letters,
- The unable to deliver
- An upwards slanted walk
- A familiar voice
- Those who have a standard way of going
- Left each chapter within us
- Warm smile not found in her cigarette
- To regain his composure for figures
- Food for rejecting his feet
- Even during--even if it during
- Lying on the floor, stretched after stir
- A soldier frames the wall
- A step by boulder
- A train by life station
- I was able to take the old north of town
- Fledgling
- Job
- Bradbury's closet
- A mummy's leggings
- Sipping mother's sweat
- Flash like an individual there
- I realize the skyline while playing catch with mother's death
- Running far away from a city, to return a week later
- Dysmorphexia
- Carried the clock over
- We have been meeting years
- Chocolate Italian princess
- Champion of Years
- "How much longer will I be able to remount the mothproof thrusting..."
- Over as rivers are over