No Poetry

I have no poetry anymore, nothing to follow my footsteps from coffee shop to coffee shop to the Wordsworth bookstore downtown, not even a downtown really. No fluidity, nothing staggered. I used to own some stuff by BP Nichol and stu-stu-stuttered when I wrote and when I walked thinking about words and the sounds of letters in my head. The sounds of letters in my head. The sounds of letters in my head. When I wanted to be a linguist. 

I used to own some stuff by Milton Acorn whose words smashed in the worm fields of Europe and again against my chest and again here on my own home turf. Whose words I could count by footfall and a wind rushing down King Street in Waterloo, words where I watched the trains idle at night and where I watched cricket in Waterloo park the day I cut myself open for the first time, the day I first tasted my blood too much. I had some poetry from a girl who worked at Jane’s who smiled at me with that smile – you know the one – who smiled at me while I was looking away. She was skinny and had torn jeans and jet black hair and I had ripped combat shorts and a ripped flannel shirt and a shaved head that knew nothing outside of its shame. I miss those who would sweep black soot behind my eyes and spiral rhythm and cadence to the underworlds. 

I miss dreaming in words.