a man will cross the world at the smallest hope of love
Beep. Wrrrr. Clickclack. Ssssss. ‘Hello?’
Ssssss. Ssssss. Ssssss. ‘It’s’ – crackle – ‘Geet.’
Crackle. ‘We could’ – buzzzzz. Ssssss – ‘meet.’
Ssssss. Ssssss. ‘If’ – crackle crackle – ‘Joe?’
Umm. ‘I’mchangingtrainsatLeuvenstation
halfpastfiveonTuesdaymorning’bye.’
Clickclack. Beep. The Monday midnight sky
shuddered like a fridge. Our conversation
never matched our love. Too pissed to drive,
I took my bike. The roads were swiped with ice.
It snowed. My front teeth froze. I fell off twice.
‘The next train‘ – Jesus! Push me! – ‘to arrive…‘
We met – still moving. ‘Kiss me!’ That was it.
I biked back home to Mol. The sun shone. Shit.
*****
John Gallas writes: “Romantic Love called upon to go out in the cold on a bike to resurrect its glories, which may never quite have been what they are remembered as. I enjoyed the stop-start challenge of the expression of hesitation, and of producing punctuation of indecision and effort. Perhaps the last word, far from being annoyance, hints at sadness.”
Photo: “OuderAmstel” by Markus Keuter is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
Form in Formless Times 
SHIT for John Gallas, as a response to his superb ‘Mol Sonnet’
Poets believe – or some of them – the world is there
just to provide their poetry with a subject,
like a trellis for roses or a spalier
to stretch an apple-tree further than you’d expect,
consolation for the way that reality
lags behind imagination, experience
is spoiled by brevity, inbuilt finality,
though you might think human beings had enough sense
to eat fruit before it rots, know preservation
changes the taste so much that it is not the same
thing, but, making that unconfessed reservation,
still persist in giving it that undeserved name…
Traders in gaudy words, reluctant to admit
how many emotions can be summed up in Shit.
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Love the mordant wit (my main squeeze)! Last line–last word–a killer.
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And his range is phenomenal.
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