{"id":896,"date":"2010-01-04T21:51:17","date_gmt":"2010-01-05T02:51:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tsatski.ca\/?p=896"},"modified":"2010-01-05T21:29:26","modified_gmt":"2010-01-06T02:29:26","slug":"from-the-archives-teenage-poetry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tsatski.ca\/?p=896","title":{"rendered":"From the archives: Teenage Poetry"},"content":{"rendered":"

Something I wrote when I was 16. The things one finds in filing cabinets.<\/em><\/p>\n


\n<\/em><\/p>\n

The Day I Ate My Dwarf Spleens<\/strong><\/p>\n

I<\/p>\n

The day the sky rained egg<\/p>\n

I reached so soft across<\/p>\n

pulled from the setting sky<\/p>\n

the raging Albatross.<\/p>\n

\n

“Release me now,” it roared at me<\/p>\n

with snaking tails in its breath,<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

“release me now I tell you twice!”<\/p>\n

and upon me down came death.<\/p>\n

\n

Out its mouth came a thousands holes<\/p>\n

all with mouths of their very own<\/p>\n

and tooth in tooth we all embraced<\/p>\n

falling in dance of bone.<\/p>\n

\n

The bone in my grasp to the Albatross turned<\/p>\n

“How nice – the sunset pinks this hour,”<\/p>\n

the bird sneered, and the bone on spoke<\/p>\n

“the sky, it sings like a flower.”<\/p>\n

\n

As the white bone ended his verse<\/p>\n

perceived I that the wicked bird<\/p>\n

had set upon me the evil curse:<\/p>\n

left my life to seas lost.<\/p>\n

\n

I dropped harder and faster than falling hope,<\/p>\n

faster and harder than broken faith,<\/p>\n

racing a course to the absolute end,<\/p>\n

racing a course to the ultimate fate.<\/p>\n

\n

\n

II<\/p>\n

\n

‘Twas the merry man upon the raft<\/p>\n

that saved the skin of mine paling corpse<\/p>\n

kept to my life the burning ember<\/p>\n

’twas the little man and his porpoise.<\/p>\n

\n

\n

For deep into the sea had I plunged<\/p>\n

three thousand leagues away the clouds<\/p>\n

down and up and down I fell<\/p>\n

into the arms of the man in shrouds.<\/p>\n

\n

\n

And this is the song he sang unto me:<\/p>\n

\n

“Two monkeys by the ocean sea,<\/p>\n

said the first monkey to the other:<\/p>\n

‘Tonight we shall dine on wine and sloth soup!’<\/p>\n

\n

But regrettable…<\/p>\n

unfortunately…<\/p>\n

tragically…<\/p>\n

they died.<\/p>\n

\n

“To heaven their souls flew white and soft<\/p>\n

all knowing their God would be kind,<\/p>\n

keep them sheltered beneath his wing,<\/p>\n

pure joyful bliss both would they find.<\/p>\n

\n

“When God approached the two monkey souls<\/p>\n

both they cried in shameless blasphemy,<\/p>\n

for God was not what they had believed:<\/p>\n

there feathered He stood – a canary.”<\/p>\n

\n

The short man turned to me<\/p>\n

explained he was of dwarven species<\/p>\n

plunged his hand into his belly<\/p>\n

pulled out bloody his spleen.<\/p>\n

\n

That made all so clear to me…<\/p>\n

\n

\n

III<\/p>\n

The dwarven man with flowing beard,<\/p>\n

shored me off his raft and onto land<\/p>\n

mounted he his porpoise again<\/p>\n

and left me clutching his spleen.<\/p>\n

I stayed there on the barren beach<\/p>\n

I cried out in paindrowning sorrow<\/p>\n

I squeezed his spleen as if a leech<\/p>\n

I collapsed under deepening woe.<\/p>\n

\n

That dwarf had faded from my life<\/p>\n

left me all alone and cross<\/p>\n

all I owned was inner strife<\/p>\n

and the ache of the Albatross.<\/p>\n

\n

I looked left to my feathered foe<\/p>\n

who had nested right by my side,<\/p>\n

I looked to him with eyes of fury,<\/p>\n

I looked to him with eyes that cried.<\/p>\n

\n

Had he cause my deep inner strife?<\/p>\n

Had he cause my dwarf to leave?<\/p>\n

Questions plagued me, puzzled me so<\/p>\n

and answers I could not achieve.<\/p>\n

\n

The Albatross stared idly<\/p>\n

it gazed at me as if void<\/p>\n

lacking perception, discretion, and thought,<\/p>\n

so I struck its stupid head.<\/p>\n

\n

I killed the dumb creature<\/p>\n

and I cared not a bit.<\/p>\n

I killed it.<\/p>\n

\n

IV<\/p>\n

\n

And there I stayed<\/p>\n

grass in front, behind and right,<\/p>\n

an albatross nest at my left<\/p>\n

and the dead bird in my bite.<\/p>\n

\n

Hungrily I fed upon the meat,<\/p>\n

the rawness of the bird’s blood,<\/p>\n

the bulging of the dwarven spleen:<\/p>\n

so much more I had to eat than could.<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Something I wrote when I was 16. The things one finds in filing cabinets. The Day I Ate My Dwarf Spleens I The day the sky rained egg I reached so soft across pulled from the setting sky the raging Albatross. “Release me now,” it roared at me with snaking tails in its breath,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tsatski.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/896"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tsatski.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tsatski.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tsatski.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tsatski.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=896"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.tsatski.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/896\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":902,"href":"https:\/\/www.tsatski.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/896\/revisions\/902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tsatski.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tsatski.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tsatski.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}