from "The Mist and The Slipper"

by Vincent Dachy

SLIPPER

Slips, slippery slopes. Walking, dragging one’s feet.
The joy and the weight of the world; at night or early in
the morning.
Slip-on laughter occasionally: molting from inside as
the pencil goes and something gets shaped by its own
secretion like a snail leaves its wake moist.

ANECDOTES

“I detest mummy.”
Wasn’t that the first poem I wrote? With passion.
And I left it where I thought it would not be found.
It was short and cogent. It was well received.
My mother could read between the lines.
I don’t think I recoiled from mother tongue.

The world is cruel and cruel too the path to be carved
toward my beloved. The furrow started after ten years
old and lasted till dawn. I liked my carving pen.

After that it was too late to ignore writing. Far too late;
so late I could not remember whether there had ever
been a before.

POSSIBILITIES

Some write to leave traces. Why not looking back?
Some have vivid imagination.
Some write to show that they are from a parish or [from]
a town, a tribe or a street.
Some write to show that they can wield it.
Some like to tell stories, the more lies the better. To be believed.
Some write to pull legs.
Some like to move, to move others, or to move on and on and on.
Some write to make themselves be a little bit. Well, one
has to find one way or another.
Some write with an immense sense of incommensurable hopelessness.
Some write to be clever, others write, but were already clever.
Some write because they are forgetful.
Some write because they can’t play music, others because they can.
Some write instead of shouting.
Some write to wake people up. In your dreams!
Some write because they do not know what else to do with themselves.
Some write just to find a place for a comma.
I may fall in all of these with more or less readiness.
But above all else I write to give a pace, a slope
to the vapours, the savours, the beats and spasms that
travel my body (to which my head belongs).

I plead guilty.
(I only plead guilty. No excuse.)