“I was here before, a long time ago
and now I am here again
is an observation that occurs in poetry
as frequently as rain occurs in life.”

From “Lines Composed Over Three Thousand Miles from Tintern Alley”
by Billy Collins

The same rings true for About pages,
when I’m cursored to the same empty
spot, time and again,
as if this hole in the text
is really just me
in desperate want of filling.

I try to shovel in the requisite dreams,
the ambitions, the vagaries of life,
into flying dirt mounds of status,
clumps of experience,
the hungry earth of trait, pock
marked in clay pigeons winged,
fragmented.

Like a grave-digger in rewind,
I feed the gaping shaft
with hobbies, musical interests,
soft sentiments of family life,
rerun faves and sports affiliates,
the resume abyss that eclipses
like Atlas shrugging
and dropping me
through molten core,
meaning, the lather of lava
magma, bored excavation
down to the bowels of China,
Hades, and the new Republic
of Self Doubt.

Sure, I’ve been before,
Down-and-out here,
In emptied lists,
Vacant, bullet-friendly indents
Like easter-day tombs
Coughing up messiahs,
husked from stereo-types
like iPods unsleeved,
understating the obvious
for clean lines
and the love of
Frank Lloyd Wright,
And what buttressed
maxims about the leaning stack
of books by my bed
could ever provide
a clue as to what this
is all about, Derrida?

The blog, the life,
The author, the hole.
The yeti, the cave.
The tour guide, the pilgrims.
The banshee, the activist,
The lover, the rest.

I guess that’s what it’s about
mostly.

by Todd D Johnson (aka Yeti)