I is for injury, for interloper, for infatuation, for imagination.
I is for India, infidel, for Icarus in flight.
I is for Indigenous, independent and influential.
I is my personal pronoun, except when I’m plural, which has been happening a lot lately, CGI or no CGI, I am mostly me. Whatever I am or is, I’m not U.
I is for immune, for icon, for insane,
I is for incarcerate, incinerate, inappropriate
I is for idea. As in “what’s the big.”
DO ME SOME IMPOSSIBLE THING
Never been heard or seen
before I have seen it. Awe shucks,
almost heard it, but I’m not wearing
my hearing aids. Nearly caught
a glimpse but I’m not wearing
my looking glasses, so lie to me instead.
I’ll believe you.
~ I is for for intubate, with my wife’s permission ….
slide that fat flexible tube down my throat
lungs full of dirty vegetable
the tube getting my goat.
~
I is for inspiration, there was no room for that.
I is for id, largely hid
I is for incest
COMING UP NEXT
Incest: My mother told me this story the night before she left for home.
About three weeks ago a cousin from Saskatchewan phones out of the blue from the bus station. She needed a ride, not from the bus station, but from where she was staying to the funeral the next day. Mom likes driving in southern Manitoba in her white car and agrees to takes her.
On the way to the funeral my mother’s cousin asks if they could stop for a viewing at the chapel before the body was taken to the church for the service. She said she had not seen the dead woman, her sister, for a long time. Mom likes driving fast in her white car so she hurries the car and there is time to stop.
They go into the chapel. There is only one plain closed casket. They both sit and wait, though mother isn’t sure for exactly what. Eventually the undertaker comes to load the dead woman in the casket into his black, already running, hearse parked just outside the door of the funeral home. Taken by surprise he does not hesitate to open the casket, stepping back into his office to allow some privacy. The hearse is still running and the smell of the sweet exhaust fumes are noticeable.
My mother’s cousin steps up to the coffin, looks intensely at her sister and curses through her teeth.
YOU POOR DISGUSTING MISERABLE OLD BITCH
IF YOU HAD LIVED EVEN A HALF DECENT LIFE’
YOU MIGHT HAVE LIVED A LITTLE LONGER
FOUND PEACE IN THE EYES OF GOD AND LIVED
A MUCH HAPPIER LIFE ON EARTH, NEVER MIND
IN THE AFTERLIFE! YOU WILL BURN IN HELL
FOR WHAT YOU’VE DONE!
My mother had not met either of these women before the day of the funeral. She admits she was shocked at how anyone, even a stranger, could speak to her dead sister like that; sending her to the grave with curses. They leave the funeral chapel quickly, hearing the hurried footsteps of the undertaker.
My mother got the whole sorry story later. The dead woman had had a child with her son. He was seventeen when he had fucked his mother. There was no mention of what happened to the baby. But the motherfucker was not allowed at the funeral. At the cemetery he stood alone at the painted white iron gates and cried his eyes out.
INVENTORY
Can’t get this can’t have that
All I get is pain in no time flat.
Nobody knows my racing thoughts
my Beck inventory, no cartilage in stock
Can’t get this can’t have that
all’s I got is this pain in no time flat
my spine and my shoulders my thumbs
my fingers my hips my knees my ankle
one left is the right for the accelerator oedipal
I sit in my mother’s lap driving she lets me
hold the wheel, Camus relives his childhood
a passenger in 1960, there is nothing he can do
overpowered Facel Vega loses the road
slams into a tree his auto-fiction complete
Nobody to know my racing thoughts
about my Beckett inventory. Yes, I’ve got
no cartilage in stock, this pain all
I own in no time flat
I can get into that.