Loch Step

/ Doug Jacquier

This piece of deep existentialist collage poetry was inspired by this week’s Unicorn Challenge photo prompt.

The bleak midwinter arrived in

the middle of winter

and it was bleak.

Not moor bleak;

more bleak than that.

The wind was keen,

not in that American neat way

nor like mustard,

but sharp

and bleak

because it was midwinter.

I watched it being bleak midwinter

until I saw her

through the glass darkly

of the doors of

the bus to nowhere

and I knew I had to

make her mine, make her mine, make her mine.

I leapt aboard and raced up the aisle,

skirting the vegan haggis eaters,

knocking over old men that looked like Keith Richards

and trampling on the children of the revolution

until I could see her

gazing out the window at Itchycoo Park.

Later, we performed Shakespeare in the park.

She wore a yellow cotton dress

foaming like a wave on the ground around her knees.

I wore a hot fever ironed strip-ed pair of pants

and followed her in the dance

as the park began melting in the dark,

with pea-green rain pouring down and

our passion flowed like pea soup in the sky.

We took a magic carpet ride

and travelled with birds

like tender babies in our hands and

looked down on old men

tossing cabers by the tussocks.

But then the conductor asked me for my ticket

and threw me off

on the Boulevard of Broken Dreams

just near Desolation Row

at Loch Step.

Again I watched it being bleak midwinter

but I don’t think God did.

20 thoughts on “Loch Step”

  7. what a fun story for the hypo-youthful citizens of the blogosphere! while the gift of not having to look up any lyric fragments is not quite on par with sleeping the night through without getting up once…. still*

    * by way of credentials: listening to full album Led Zep I as I type

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  9. Doug, Doug, Doug, this is so funny. The repetition at the beginning cracked me up.

    “The bleak midwinter arrived in

    the middle of winter

    and it was bleak.”

    And it continued with such a bleak fervor until it didn’t, and he trounced on everyone to get to the girl he probably couldn’t see very clearly. She could have been an old hag with pretty hair.

    “until I saw her

    through the glass darkly”

    Since the bus was going nowhere, I wonder where he really was when he got kicked off. We know it was back to midwinter. 🙂 Fabulous!

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