There’s a gap in the platform
between the train and the earth
you can fall right through it
mind the gap.

There’s a gap in the sidewalk
between the grate and the earth
you can fall right through it
mind the gap.

There’s a gap in the windshield
between the crash and the reaction
you can fall right through it
clean into midair
mind the gap.

There’s a man in the sidewalk
between the gap and the earth
you could fall right through him
you could wonder until you’re blue
was he in some sort of
extra planar space?
a bag of holding placed inside a bag of holding?
that didn’t have room for bicycles
in front of B63 buses?

There’s a Gap on Times Square, now.
They used to have commercials about falling
into them.

The man is wearing one of their shirts.
His blood’s on the shards
in the gaps
of the street.

I have fallen into him
and no one followed me there…

---

 

about the 54 poems written at 27 ::

 

After much deliberation, I decided to keep the whole tradition of doubling my age and writing that many poems in a year. You’ll notice that April Thirtyish has already passed, so I’m late in posting. I’ve gotten about half of them written and will begin posting this week.

I started this whole mess with 46 poems written at 23, most of which are still up on the site and many of which are awful. Those poems I wrote because I read somewhere that the best age for poetry is 23. I was turning 24 and had an existential crisis.

Then I got over it.

Suddenly I was 25 and thought, “Why not do it again?” So I doubled my age and wrote 50 poems at 25. Again, most of these are still on the site and I’m proud of one or two of them.

Now I’m twenty-eight and it’s almost a principle, almost an undeniable fact of life. When the wild Lancelot is in his native habitat and his age is in an odd year, he will be secreting poetry. I do this because poetry is important, because we must take an active role in the creation of new language or else our language dies.

That means I must write, I must learn how to create better poems even if I’m awful at it — everyone must because the fate of our culture’s at stake. For me, this year, that’s 54 poems at 27.

So I’ll schedule these suckers out and give it a go. Follow along with the category 54 @ 27.

---

image by Cyril Fluck

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