Len Gurts Is for the Children

“Let your feelings slip, boy, but never your mask, boy”
—Underworld, ‘Born Slippy (Nuxx)’

I was a dead tree or dead boy—something like that; but at a minimum
I was a detached “maybe”—a something very far away from here—
and I just wrote and read (though sometimes
I didn’t even take the words in: I would just stare blankly
at the Fyodors and Plaths believing osmosis
would just do something, perhaps? Some of the wordsmiths: they would laugh
at that. But this isn’t the place for them! Although, if that is you: sympathy
for the little shits, please?) when suddenly, as if
in a flash (because why not, good reader—why the fucking hell not:
does it not merely seem like a flash—like nothing—if we ever
get the chance to live this thing right?) I was here
and built and writing, but with lots of visible screw-heads and stripped bark: I had narrative
and front and back; I could use metaphor (“I was a ship
in the storm and lasted like shit. / Rained loads. Bad trip. / Got very wet
and sunk-ish.”) but I had no idea what this all was for: “Why
am I having to do this now?” I thought. Now I look back
at the so-called other trees lost in the woods, and I worry
I can do nothing for them with this. And I have no idea
why—as a mere “maybe”—I survived (I cannot pat
my bark or inner chil- (leave off) and say, “Great story. So brave. Well done!”). And the forest:
it was much more fun in there! I ran amok! Writing
and editing and reading myself back now though, I feel
I’m still out there fighting all of this instead, as a lot of that dead boy
clearly longs to remain lost in the woods.