Mythos & Marginalia

2015 – 2025: a decade of days

  • identity possibility

    Our identity is as much who we are, as who we want to be.

    Who we are; it’s complicated (I know I am) and every once in a while we need to remind ourselves of what makes us unique, interesting, desirable, and worthy.

    I am so many things; defined as much by what I do as what happens to be.

    I am, above all else, a father. The aspects of that role alone change, and will continue to change, as time passes. The importance is not lost on me, nor is it expected.

    I am a brother. I am an orphan of sorts. I am a friend. I am a lover. I am an individual, but I am part of something quite magnificent.

    I am not alone.

    I don’t subscribe to a particular religion, but I do have faith. I won’t simply cop out and say I am spiritual; I was raised Christian and I do not know enough about the alternatives, so, right now, it is what I know.

    I am open to change.

    I am Canadian. I was born here; it is what I have always known.

    I am curious. I am kind. I am present.

    I am aware.

    I am a poet and I am a writer. I choose to differentiate because the roles are not interchangeable, and I will flip back and forth depending on the mood or the muse. Words do not limit me.

    I am who I am, more than what I am.

    I am a historian in as much as I’ve learned the lessons of the past will, often, temper decisions I make about the future. I am here, and I will not go back there.

    I am flawed, at times fucked up, yet I see my shortcomings as opportunities to heal, to change, and to be more understanding of those who, like me, can easily be led astray (curiosity does have consequences).

    I am a sinner, and not purposely so. Perhaps “survivor” would be more apt. I have done what I needed to do.

    I am grateful, and I am ashamed.

    I am myself.

    I am a man, but more so; I am human.

    I am a possibility.

    I am many things. More importantly, I could be more.

    © 2019 j.g. lewis

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  • shelter

    Once a field, now a park,
    once a sapling. Now a tree we only notice
    when we want to.

    Through years and decades; centuries
    this city has grown around it, sucking up 
    its precious oxygen.

    Burly limbs stretch out to shelter 
    in rains, shade from a sun growing
    hotter each day .

    Through years, decades, and centuries. 
    We notice only when
    we want to.

    © 2020 j.g. lewis

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  • meaning comes with age

       Summer doesn’t speak;
    it whispers a conscious melody
    to high-heeled fashionistas with open toes,
    sunburnt brats with runny noses, and
    old men who know
    evening air is sweeter
    when dusk has had its way.     Humidity.
    Sweat of the glass,
                                   Tanqueray and tonic
    will take away the pain,
    Mosquito bites, lonely nights
    sitting on an ever- creaky veranda,
    Dinah Washington crackles from the speaker.

    Suddenly you appear. . .

       Any other day
    flowers stand taller, like 
    the younger women strolling by,
    getting younger by the day.
    Watch them 
                           and wipe 
    the perspiration from your brow;
    the once-crisp handkerchief has
    soaked up many nights of lustful thoughts.
    Old men just grow older,
    the meaning comes with age.     Humility.
    Summer lasts as long
    as a savings account wastefully spent.

    Then you are gone. . .

       Over time
    most of the flowers will perish
    well before first frost,
    mostly from neglect.     Naturally.
    We will all grow tired 
    of looking at them,
                                    or forget the beauty.
    Our minds go to other places.
    Yet summer, in its capricious wisdom,
    will breathe again
    to those of us who will listen.
    To young women
    and older men.

    © 2018 j.g. lewis

    * selected lyrics from ‘Invitation’.
    Written by Bronislaw Kaper/Paul Francis Webster, 
    the jazz standard was memorably recorded 
    by Dinah Washington in 1962. Has desire ever
    been captured more sensually in a musical state?

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  • weather it is

    Time-treasured romanticism 
    of a soft summer rain; 
    stories told 
    again and again. 
    Gentle pitter-patter 
    against window glass
    like a teenaged lover. An invitation 
    to step outside
    when no one knows
    where will we go.
    Through the city, we walk on water
    across the cement. Mind the puddles.
    Soaked to the skin, 
    our spirits not dampened.
    Rain breaks the heat and
    maybe even the humidity.
    Whether it has,
    weather it is,
    for a time we forget where we are.
    We remember
    decades later.
    On a night like this
    with a rain like that.

    © 2021 j.g. lewis

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  • who else will weep

    The angel at the table glares back across the clutter. Dirty dishes, 
    candy bar wrappers and tuna tins. Self-rolled cigarette smolders 
    on a side plate, the ashes of those before spilling over. Ignored.
    Kitchen bulb, harsh and bare, casts bearded shadows across 
    the squalor. Joni Mitchell crackles from the speakers — a record 
    once played for a daughter — offering only the slightest comfort 
    needed on a day like today. A day where she 
    could use a friend as much as a fix. Depression familiar 
    to women who’ve lost a child, a fortune fit for no one. 
    A decade has passed, but not the pain. 
    The philandering husband who chose to grieve in other ways, 
    salt in a wound that never heals. 
    Self-medicating. 
    First doctor prescribed, then vintage imbibed. Now whatever 
    is there, whatever it takes, whatever she can find. She can 
    ill afford to be picky. The dollar-store diet, fortified by 
    middle-of-the-night gas station cravings, her pallid skin and 
    coarse complexion more becoming of an anorexic, 
    or crack whore. 
    Years of low-wages, welfare, and tricks turned in-between. 
    Home is now a third-floor walk-up furnished with a bed, table,
    two chairs, a suitcase, and an old stereo. Nothing much. 
    Not even a photograph. 
    Inconsequential items pawned off, lost, or left behind. 
    Addictions, afflictions, and poverty can prune away all that 
    does not matter, and all that does not belong. Stagnant air 
    seasoned by sour milk and cigarettes, and bed sheets soiled 
    by the sweat of men who visit. It should never have been. 
    The angel has watched it all unfold. 
    Of course she cries, but only to herself. 
    Who else will weep?
    A random ambulance screams into the night, flashing lights 
    animate the roomful of nothing. Street-level shouts from 
    a crowd of drunks, the white noise of her dark days. Searching 
    for a vein between the scabs and bruises, lesions that mark 
    a dead-end journey, finding space at the elbow’s crease 
    next to the ripening furuncle. She ties off and with hinky hand 
    stabs the needle into a tiny patch of waiting flesh. 
    A fervent rush consumes her entire being. Staring back at 
    the angel’s emerald eyes, her vision goes from transparent 
    to translucent, and then, not at all. 
    The angel wistfully watches, 
    a scene played out countless times before, shakes her head, 
    rises to her feet and shuts the battered door.

    © 2016 j.g. lewis

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