Three lessons in Mortality (A poem in Four Parts)

Three lessons in Mortality (A poem in Four Parts)

I was on the bus today,
when I realised that I had to get off.
I left that bus lost.
I knew where I was
but hardly where I was going.
I walked past a broken vacumm.
It's head was on the ground.
It's body on the step.
It's hose a disjointed heap by the corner stair.
And I knelt by it.
I prayed for it.
I prayed to the vacuum.
I prayed for it to find form.
To find function.
To find purpose again.
I wiped my eyes.
Then my dirtied pants.
Then walked on.

I walked into a small town.
Not a town.
But a small community
on the edge of urban jungle.
Stores and houses ran together
into a fountain.
I drank from it.
It didn't save me.
So I continued on
till the trail no longer continued,
then made my way back.
I'm coming home.
And each bench had an epitaph;
I wanted to know how to become endearing.
You have to sit a lot I found.
You have to appriciate the small things I found.
You have to give your time to others I found.
And you have to take a lot of shit I found,
because the bird shit still hasn't been cleaned by the rain.

And I make my way home again,
and find a bench hidden in the trees
unseen.
Awww, it's for his wife:
"My life began on May 13, 2004"
But I swear the man had been born 1986.
I sit and stare out again.
And wipe my knees,
among other things,
hoping to get out
or to enlarge the stains.
I want people to ask about them.
For me to have to explain this night.
I get up and walk home.

I walk through the trees home again.
They swoop lower,
and I must bend to not be struck.
A pain.
In my side.
A knife to my back.
Like the rest it is literal.
The bum wedging it further into my ribs.
He comes before me
proding my pockets.
He asks me if I want to know why.
I repsond:
"Tonight was so obtuse-
I should have saw it coming."

Matthew Koutzun

(Ok, many of you may think this to be one of my strangest poems yet. But the strangest of things is that everything (except the bum) is entirely true. This was my Victoria Day, Monday night. I have no idea how it all came to be like this, or what I was thinking, but the experience I will remember forever. Pray to the vacuum gods for purpose. They'll bring it if you wait.)