This one was inspired by the Welsford Falls just outside Saint John, New Bruswick. It started as a short story, turned into a poem, back to a short story and ended up as a poem. The Falls were dropped somewhere in the process...which took about 10 years.

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arrival


he called it arrival

a cross dimensional jump
he said
into a place or a state

or a "just knowing" the arrival

that was when he could still talk
when he was still knowing here and
still knowing the cubes and spheres of three dimensions
of things that could be described
he said
in the cubes and spheres of here

these things he called the

disjointed

broken speech
of half realities
foundering on a plateau
of meanings
crippled and foundering
he said
flat
formless and lifeless
compared to arrival

all around us
he said
look
vibrations in a pool
crinkles and folds
just foundering around in the pool
and we’re drowning in the pool
he said
drowning in the flip flop of
broken meanings

arrival
he said
would be painful but not
nearly as painful as the dull
gray
swatches of ordinary here and now

fuck the sureness of straight lines and smooth curves
he said
screw the rules and the fixed perspectives
the safety of the knowable ordinary
the slow death of sameness

he dissolved them
melted the lines and the curves
axon by axon
dendrite by dendrite
as his brain dissolved
into a pool of new meanings
disconnected
in the fields of his arrival

in there
once
close to arrival
he saw an ancient Indian wandering through the woods
his body
disintegrating with each step
and all the parts of him falling to the ground
fingers and ears falling to the ground
seeping into the ground part by part
and the last part of him to seep into the ground
was his smile

I am that beautiful Indian
he said
seeping
seeping into the porous ground of arrival

he went back again and again
to arrival
to be that Indian
to escape the cubes and spheres of here
he said
and seep visit by visit
into the knowing of his arrival

and then there was nothing left of here
to seep into there
into the rich red earth of arrival

and now his eyes
stare
into a place beyond his stare
where he dances on the ceiling of his mind
and yells
I’VE ARRIVED
through the yellow
incomprehensible
portal of his arrival

   

Somebody gave Biff a jar of model airplane glue and a Baggie.

   

...was shoe polish, a spoon and a match.

Biff
Silence says it all.

www.biffmitchell.com

   

from the perspective of Aunt Hitler.

   

...she doesn't know about the drugs.

Biff
Silence says it all.

www.biffmitchell.com

   

Cussin' but not kissin' cousins!

   

I'm originally from Ontario. Everyone in Ontario is a cousin...or a Newfie.

Biff
Silence says it all.

www.biffmitchell.com