I arrive early. I want the best seat.<\/p>\n
Front row for the front line<\/p>\n
of shadows meted out as justice.<\/p>\n
I whip out Walt (he’d of loved that phrase!)<\/p>\n
and begin to read from \u201cSong of Myself,\u201d section 32,<\/p>\n
the section Walt wrote with Bonnie and Clyde in mind:<\/p>\n
I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain’d,<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n I stand and look at them long and long.<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n They do not sweat and whine about their condition,<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n So they show their relations to me and I accept them,<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n They bring me tokens of myself, they evince them plainly in their possession.<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n \u201cHow do you spell ‘application?’\u201d<\/p>\n the young man asks me.<\/p>\n I close Walt.<\/p>\n I stop thinking about the tokens<\/p>\n of myself the dogs bring me.<\/p>\n This book is about those tokens.<\/p>\n He’s in the brown hoodie again,<\/p>\n always,<\/p>\n always greasy,<\/p>\n he asks me<\/p>\n without looking up from his phone.<\/p>\n I presume he’s filling out a job application,<\/p>\n or reapplying to become a human being again,<\/p>\n but then why do you need to spell ‘application?’<\/p>\n I spell it. Three times.<\/p>\n We talk. He mostly talks.<\/p>\n Talks about his darkening<\/p>\n marginalization,<\/p>\n into the dark unknown,<\/p>\n already past the black border<\/p>\n on one of the ancient maps<\/p>\n when the earth was flat<\/p>\n and sea serpents<\/p>\n gobbled up the explorers.<\/p>\n Walt was an explorer,<\/p>\n an explorer of the marginalized,<\/p>\n their poet, too,<\/p>\n their greatest poet,<\/p>\n but Walt is dead to them now,<\/p>\n and I use pick and shovel<\/p>\n to entomb him for them,<\/p>\n us.<\/p>\n In fact, the young man<\/p>\n is applying for a job,<\/p>\n a job processing crabs,<\/p>\n the ones about to arrive<\/p>\n in Astoria, the only job<\/p>\n allowed him (and me).<\/p>\n But we get to wield<\/p>\n the best knives,<\/p>\n sharp ones pulled<\/p>\n from the Internet.<\/p>\n There are no crabs in the restaurants without us.<\/p>\n I wish Walt could sing about that.<\/p>\n He’d know what to sing. I don’t.<\/p>\n The meeting convenes.<\/p>\n Bursts of advice. Almost in song.<\/p>\n A man praises his ankle revoke.<\/p>\n A man loves his new A.I.P (approved intimate partner).<\/p>\n (I didn’t make up A.I.P. The State did. There is a form.)<\/p>\n A man loves the old fishermen stories in AA.<\/p>\n A man is going to sea.<\/p>\n A man cut his friends like bait.<\/p>\n Some salty language for familiarity.<\/p>\n Like from the old salts in the hold.<\/p>\n A crew we almost are,<\/p>\n backslapping, drinking our stories.<\/p>\n Don’t call me Ishmael, though.<\/p>\n He’s the only one who survived.<\/p>\n I want all of us to make it,<\/p>\n and return one day<\/p>\n and harpoon our Ahab,<\/p>\n even though his soul<\/p>\n is already dead.<\/p>\n Let him eat crab.<\/p>\n (If you found this post enjoyable, thought provoking or enlightening, please consider supporting a writer at work by making a financial contribution to this blog or by purchasing an NSP book.) <\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I arrive early. I want the best seat. Front row for the front line of shadows meted out as justice. I whip out Walt (he’d of loved that phrase!) and begin to read from \u201cSong of Myself,\u201d section 32, the section Walt wrote with Bonnie and Clyde in mind: I think I could turn and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3530,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,42],"tags":[543,6,52,13,421,88,364,257,256],"class_list":["post-3529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","category-poetry","tag-ahab","tag-matt-love","tag-oregon","tag-oregon-coast","tag-poem","tag-poetry","tag-probation-poem","tag-song-of-myself","tag-walt-whitman","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3529"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3529\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3531,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3529\/revisions\/3531"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}