An Alchemy of Words

Hard Thing to Do

"Hard Thing to Do"

Falling

ten stories

is a hard thing to do

at least (so I've heard)

on the radio //them saying that

some guy ssslipped while pretending

to commit

suicide as a joke.

Fell

ten (10) stories

and landed on the roof

of a ?Volvo! a hard THING

to do -- lucky it wasn't

a con-ver-ti-ble or else he(would)'d

be walking around

with a STICK Shift

for a spine (!)

Fell

(10) ten stories

to lay there

for a few (3) SEConds

before getting up,,,

brushing himself off

and trying' to find (himself)

some //new// friends-

maybe a hospital or at least a lawyer

ANYthing but another eleVAtor

[although probably another party

this 1 (one) in a (1) one-storey bungalow

in the middle of the big city,,,

A hard THING to do--

IF you ask me.]

˗ˏˋ・。☆.・゜✭・.
AUTHOR'S NOTES
✫・゜・。.・。. ✭

Up until this point in my life, I'd grown up in a variety of small towns across Canada and even internationally. But always small towns. I'd never lived in a big city.

I hit Toronto like it was a brick wall, which I suppose it was. The effect was deeply disorienting, something that found expression within this poem. It took on a very different style than anything I'd written previously and it's not a style I've revisited much since. It's a unique moment in time that stands alone, trapped in amber, the first and last of its absurdist kind.