"A Lame Rendition"

Does the reveal impact?
As my gossamer lies

carve a pumpkin into Spiderman
this is no throughput
with vampire lanterns

the smell of Off
in the gloom of my parents' garage


"We might call this confused, hazy state 'melancholy,' or perhaps we should call it by its Turkish name, hüzün, which denotes a melancholy that is communal rather than private. Offering no clarity, veiling reality instead, hüzün brings us comfort, softening the view like the condensation on a window when the teakettle has been spouting steam on a winter's day. ...If hüzün has been central to İstanbul culture, poetry, and everyday life over the past two centuries, if it dominates our music, it must be at last partly because we see it as an honor...conveying worldly failure, listlessness, and spiritual suffering...the city itself becomes the very illustration, the very essence of hüzün. ...in İstanbul the remains of a glorious past civilization are everywhere visible. ...The people of İstanbul simply carry on with their lives amid the ruins. Many western writers and travelers find this charming. But for the city's more sensitive and attuned residents, these ruins are reminders that the present city is so poor and confused that it can never again dream of rising to its former heights of wealth, power, and culture. ...Hüzün rises out of the pain they feel for everything that has been lost, but it is also what compels them to invent new defeats and new ways to express their impoverishment." --Orhan Pamuk, İstanbul (2004)

"As for Yahyn Kemal, İstanbul's greatest and most influential poet, throughout his life he refused to publish any book at all." --ibid