Zachariah McNaughton lives, works and plays at the Collingwood Arts Center as a full time hobo and part time poet with his short-haired tabby and a spider plant named Alphonso. He's a member of the US army's Independent Ready Reserve, a staunch catholic, as well as a merciless ping-pong player.
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THE DEATH OF IVAN ILYICH - Tolstoy
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DEAD SOULS - Gogol
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THE HUNTING SKETCHES - Turgenev
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MARY - Nabokov
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a large dog in a dirt garden
my mother with a shovel
older siblings laughter
sunshine a single mulberry tree
good to climb and fruit
by which I compare all others.
"I love you…" she said
and I knew it like I knew a streetlight sometimes
sputters its reflection out in puddles...
how even a toaster oven eventually
ceases all toasting forever,
bathrobes and can openers,
coffee mugs on books ring
stains on Eliot's nose,
senseless half poems
on dying and lipstick
on cigarettes
in ashtrays…
“Do you love me?” she asked
for a blank check and my signature.
I knew she meant words meant things and wanted yes -
blankets pulled tight don’t always reach toes,
nobody lies like a lover in bed.
Words
imply shit.
One four letters words figure -
head larger than the fore
words tumbling water down
filters funnels poetry blisters
dropping out a sphincter
insinuated ego magnified
words out of all sense of proportion eager
born cocks waiting to snap
words over a ducks back words
enough to drive a man mad mean.
Sketching each passerby
in a slipshot style w/ one eye cocked
to capture madness. Each moment
falling through the cracks in his fingers.
How well he knows the hidden smiles,
hidden behind the thickness of spectacles,
before and after, really looking through space
and holding it, losing it, already lost.
Or a room full of hidden boxes, attic light
casting shadows, foreshortened images
of shadowed ghosts, prenascent understanding
of unspoken impulses, invisible gestures,
the spider’s web, immovable.
He wants to touch it even
that what isn't there -
a tangible nothing, uniquely textured,
sandpaper braille prophesying again and again
a hundred thousand apocalypses.
A blind prophet looking into the face of God,
unable to translate..
THE ETERNAL HUSBAND - Dostoevsky
THE DEATH OF IVAN ILYICH - Tolstoy
DEAD SOULS - Gogol
THE HUNTING SKETCHES - Turgenev
MARY - Nabokov
