Old Guy’s Ars Poetica Prosa

I am the prose poet of praline chestnut lattes when praline chestnut lattes had real pralines and chestnuts in the lattes. I always sprinkle my prose poems with cinnamon, nutmeg, cayenne, or pepper, as needed.

Britons are ready for prose poems. For ongoing meditations shared between a well-meaning dither of a man and the wise ghost of his white German shepherd. For the adventures of a man who wears un-Hawaiian aloha shirts and is often visited by the tricks of a fool. The country needs more segues into the natural history of possums and armadillos. Cancellations of the mice and rabbits that litter my subconscious. The time for the coyote to barbecue the roadrunner is a quarter-century past due.

In my prose poems I have a bone to pick with Sister Eleanore of the Lash. With all those confessor bishops with their maces and chastity belts. No one should believe anything I say. Of course, unbelievers will never ride shotgun in a rusty Silverado in a time-travel road trip from Anarene, Texas, to Lonesome Dove.

I have photographs of Irish-American uncles who lived in a tall house in the City of Roses. I inherited my gene for loneliness from men who spent hours loading coal to feed a locomotive. I hope each one of them had the privilege of blowing the whistle as they travelled through the dark.

The Fugitive Kind

Lars and the Real Girl leave Las Vegas for a Brief Encounter in Paris, Texas, or Synecdoche, New York. The Perks of Being a Wallflower are no longer a Taxi Driver’s 500 Days of Summer. And John Malkovich’s Fallen Angels leer from the One-Hour Photo shop’s Dark Corners. The moon’s view holds Nightcrawlers in The Lake House on the Boulevard of Broken Dreams. The Midnight Cowboys are In the Mood for the awkward loves they can Lose in Translation. Beneath this Eternal Sunshine of Heartbreak Hotels, the Banshees of Inisherin summon Wings of Desire to bid Midnight good morning.

To the Old Guitarist,

I imagine you cruising your Silverado north and south on Highway 61, with detours along the Natchez Trace in the spring and side trips off Route 66 during the harshest of winters. Playing “You Don’t Miss Your Water” in Vicksburg, “Suitcase Full of Blues” in Memphis, and “Key to the Highway” in Duluth.

Rumour has it you summoned a midwife back from the river near Pigeon Roost. That you redeemed the Sin Eater of Oatman by bending a note on your guitar. I think of your guitar as blue instead of brown. The hue and cry of a robin’s egg. A scrap of indigo bunting.

I beg you to traverse the National Trail this spring. For years, the men of the middle country have abandoned their labours and families to chase the will-o’-the-wisp of war, and the women have knelt on the floors of their kitchens and hollow churches searching for any scripture that might restore this broken country to a fractured grace.

Old singer, elder picker. Mend our flaws with your prodigious, yet ordinary, chords. This April, wend your pickup truck past the pie shops of Farmland and the miniature museums of southwest Pennsylvania. Pluck the harmony from your cat strings and bestow upon the fearful and the rebel the white bison’s redemptive blessings. Sound the rustic jubilee of the jaleo so the outcast might be welcomed into the unbroken circle at last.