Presence comes from The Greenwood Poet, a book that came out last week as part of my ongoing romance with doubling my years on odd years and then writing that many poems.

I spent a couple of years, off and on, writing about the gothic fantastic and the environment and death, before and after COVID (thought that obviously wasn’t the original intent). I’m going to serialize them on the site for subscribers. If you subscribe for three months, you’ll get this for free. And besides, subscribing is free for the first seven days, so why not try out the Showbear archive?

Of course — 20% will be free for everyone and I encourage you to pick up a copy of the hardback.

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Presence

I know the sunning secret
Of the dying of the phones —
The natural consequences —
The quest from lone to Lone.

I’ve held their shackled processors
Their sparkled little husks
And smiled across the table
At my bearded friend, his musk.

I’ve witnessed acts of treachery
And tasted molten silk
And other things once caged by rings
Of phones — hot tea and milk.

For some, they called me from afar —
My lifeless phone in hand
While present with me Papa tucked
His toes in Coney’s sand.

I’ve missed a many telegraph.
I rarely phone it in.
I’ve ghosted texts, gone straight to voicemail —
Every telesin.

But I can say this over brunch
Because damn phone is dead.
For I am not a cyborg
Or an internet in head.

I’m presently your person.
I’m here while you are here.
I’ve nowhere on my lifeless phone
Found answers to my fears:

That I will die still childless,
That I will meet abyss,
That I will fail at writing,
That this is my last kiss:

But there without distraction
In the teeth of every void
I make and love and make my love
Till hell itself’s annoyed.

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Photo by 卡晨 on Unsplash