Samensmelten / Merging

Cowritten with guest poet Drager Meurtant¹

Even if I knew words
or could achieve these from
some obscure webshop…

would working together
lead these words to a future
brighter than when cast

in a bonfire?
                           And how
can we compare the outflux
of poet and machine?

Just humour me now
a wee while, til impatience
cracks the courtly code

the binary of
you and me, reader/audience
artifice and real,

a continuum?

*

Not knowing whether we were halfway
(the finish not in sight),
we decided to rest till first
daylight, and then resume
our journey.

Sleeping we rehearsed,
striving to reconcile our
mighty different styles.

Wrangle each other?
Or accept the lumpy form
duality makes?

(travelling by train or bus,
you will hear fragments of speech that form a union,
based upon the place shared:

‘There’s the sakura!’
‘Fifteen hundred years old, waaah!’
‘Did you see it, kun?’)

*

Quality is a characteristic
for which no unanimous criteria exist
in poetry.

We can’t judge ourselves
let alone other travellers
or the surly guard.

Life’s ride stops but once;
so forget your destination
and party ’til when

a church bell or the descent of the sun
may herald a rest.

1. Drager Meurtant composed the first seven lines, the last two lines, the first verse after each asterisk, and the verse beginning ‘(travelling by train or bus’. The photo is from Pexels Free Photos. ↩︎