Escape From Love 4

Jim Larwill

Canadian Shield Chapbooks II.
Text Box: ESCAPE FROM LOVE The first step towards escape from love is to find hate hiding in shadow of your heart dark spot you can't quite see but you know is there foil of cold black ice sputtering plate that keeps hot muscle flesh from bursting into flames. The second step is to let doubt drip a droplet at a time on the glass edge of your small soul let January frost gloss across the surface. The third step is to blame the fog on your beloved to take the tears to drink them to use them as your own. Text Box: The forth step is to proclaim independence re-plan your life with a straight edge cue from birth to death. The fifth step is to read a lot of books to find religion without god. The sixth step is to realise poetry of your bodies was merely lust. The seventh step is to take your left index finger and to slam the door. Text Box: The eighth step is to crawl back on your belly only to become angry when you discover your knees have been ruined. The ninth step is to request help from friends, show them your tears your left index finger your knees, take the advice as if it was objective. The tenth step towards escape from love is this poem. Text Box: Jim Larwill is a figment of many people’s imaginations. It has been rumoured he is an unemployed middle-aged male. In the past he has been seen peering out of the dingy windows of Ottawa attics. It has also been reported he writes poetry. Recent sightings of this shadowy figure have been documented in the vicinity of a cabin situated in the Gatineau hills. Here Larwill has been seen wandering the woods reciting rhythmic sermons to trees and rocks. Motivated by raw lust and self-loathing Jim Larwill has become a wraith like cliché of himself. As Todd Swift says, his “haunting voice seems to explode … from the broken hearts underclass” (Poetry Spoken Here). He is bitter. He is cynical. He does not use poetry for good. Jim Larwill is; a contemptible hierarchal stereotype; a slap in the face of romantic idealism; a ridiculous symbol that has lost privilege in society. Jim is a pornographic image that has no humanity. He does not exist; however, audiences at poetry performances have been known to evoke the on-stage vision and echo of Jim Larwill. Text Box: PRISON Inside/outside breaks down and you are a fool lost in the light of her desperate beauty. Morality was a prison with wide bars. Now I am a prisoner of cliché. Each day there is less air to breath in this windowless iron house and my ears are pricked for the final execution of her voice. In pitched silence I grab on to every moment; she is the last morsel of food on the blind plate of the condemned. And she knows my cell is a trap. Time! Tell her something about time? How it is all over. A few moments with nothing left to accomplish - only an escape called love? But I am a fool and like a child that has had too much chocolate my stomach twists, hands tremble; yet, still I want more . . . until I vomit thoughts of her. Desperate I re eat each memory over and over. Greedy fingers burn with soak of bile. Deep in my chest I hear distant sound of crumpling paper.