Louis Kasatkin Poems

We sleep the sleep of forever

sleep the sleep of here and now,
...

Do maps redraw themselves after they are

rolled up and put back in the drawer?
...

The mordant day drifts along its course
into the deep deep of evening,
its hours exhausted by a futility
arduously wrought with effort, endeavour, exasperation;
...

The hours of Autumn chime
their slow lament,
dedicated to lachrymose entwined
self-pity and ennui;
...

Days are made charitable by their absence,
best off intruding someone else's eviscerated
existence rather than mine;
Time was when I felt
...

Every evening at 5.09
he leaves the office,
takes the streetcar
into town,
...

a barely muted buzzing of flies
thousands upon thousands,
a counterpoint click-clicking
of crickets in chorus,
...

Tendril lines snaking

coiled uncoiled uncoiling,
...

Smashed glass alley rain swept,
boarded storefront windows,
chainlocked factory gates,
broken streetlamp neighbourhoods;
...

Your mirror no longer recognises you
as you stare in vain at it
hoping to jog its memory;
the face your mirror chooses to reflect
...