Open Journal Montreal

As Open is all about how pieces and ideas change and grow I thought I’d post this new version of a short essay originally published here under the title Spray Paint on the Splintered frames of Parc Avenue.

There is a sense of emptiness
now that we walk cement hallways
and it’s tough to leave a mark.
Once, humans bent branches,
tamped the ground.
And something in us remembers
when the paths we took stayed and
testified to our existence.

So we scrawl our names on metro stops, above highways.
We write poetry, turn amps up too damn loud,
and blare our way
through each others’ eyes and ears and brains-
hoping to carve out something
that will remind the world of us.

Kids disappear in the city.
They melt into the landscape.

I told you all this, plus elaborate hand gestures
and passionate ineloquence,
in the Cafe Sarajevo.
And for that one night we were mythmakers, translators, clairvoyants.
In that smoke, those muddy coffees and bad wine,
the ancient, splintered frames of this old world were almost visible.

Then we left, I was so tired I could hardly see
and you laughed at how often I yawned on the short walk home.
And the cold quiet air cleared the streets.

You kissed me goodbye and, happy as I was,
I could see the old sadness
and long distance
slipping back.

And the next day you called from six million miles away.
And the memory of that night is slowly fading.
And I wish now that I had left some sort of painted mark,
like the ones being torn apart,
up the street from Sarajevo,
along the crumbling overpass
beside the park.

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[ originally posted on Monday, August 1st, 2005 at 12:45 pm and is filed under Drafts, Everything, Media, On Places and Identities, Poetry. ]