Surely Not Everyone Was Kung Fu Fighting?

_{^{© N Nazir 2021}}

“I don’t know what happens after death but I’ll have to chance it.” – Desert Snow, Jim Harrison

Some days I feel everything and need chocolate.
A song cuts through the air and pierces my heart
and makes it ache for I don’t know what
like, I feel the loss of beautiful things ending
or I miss everything while I’m experiencing it
because it’s already leaving or dying or something.
(Still, I shazam the song and add it to my library).

It’s plentiful here and desolate there,
here there’s chatter and clamour and clinking
elsewhere a morgue silence where someone left
because they didn’t have a chance and no one heard
and then it was too late, and perhaps they just needed
a roof or clothes, a hot drink, or just to know
what a warm bed is, and it’s a ceaseless haunting
and when will it end, it shouldn’t end with death
when life is granted, when there’s such desire to live
what then, what then, what then, what then?

Sometimes, opportunity comes like a tiny little bird
and you don’t spot it at first but sometimes you do
and you think that’s an interesting idea and wonder
if it’s time, are you ready for a change and can you bear it
because all good changes hurt at first, don’t they?

And you continue walking down the street
and someone walks by wearing a t-shirt that says
surely not everyone was kung fu fighting?
and you think that’s a bloody good question
why do we assume they all were, there’s bound
to be the ones like me who hid under the table
or darted out the back door for a quick getaway.

And I think, later, when I’m a proper writer
with a study like all the old guys always have
I’ll sit at my escritoire and spew thoughts onto paper
I’ll never share because they’re too honest, then
do erasure poems instead with borrowed words
that jump out like a pleasant surprise, relatable
and removed, some answer I was seeking.

Or maybe I’ll be an artist like I always wanted
but had to defer my dream because of life and rent
because the good light is always gone too soon
and the art world is cruel and makes you lose your way
yet you miss your old studio even though it was haunted
and perpetually cold because the windows were old
and the wind whistled through, and all the other artists
would sometimes sneak into your space
to see what you were working on and you
would sneak into theirs too, and some days
you’d work in silence for hours together
so peaceful and industrious
and that kind of companionship was always
so much more preferable than any other.

_{^{© N Nazir 2022}}

Written for dVerse Poetics: Songs of Unreason, where Linda is hosting and gives us the challenge of writing a poem using one of eight given prompt lines from various poems by Jim Harrison.