Nothing Can Stop Me Now |
Issue 16
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He chased records like the Duke’s hounds went after a fox. Five days on a pogo stick. Just to be named in a book named after a beer. The fastest yodel. The most jump-roping dogs. Eating a bicycle in fifteen days. The world’s largest collection of cereal box records. The Monkees Greatest Hits. The Jackson 5. Rock and roll. From the unreasonable silence of the universe to the lived experience of the absurd. Death in chains.
Eventually he came to see that records were futile. Like Zeno’s arrow he could never reach the end, always only halfway there, to be overtaken by something going nowhere. He re-purposed his pogo stick to use for transportation. Pogoing from bar to bar. Dropping quarters in the jukeboxes and watching the mechanical arm slip the record from its resting place and onto the turntable. The rock of Sisyphus rolling forever away. A happy struggle for a higher fidelity. The blues uplifting tragedies. Come let me hold you, darlin’. |
Robert Witmer has resided in Japan for the past 46 years. His poems have appeared in many print and online journals. He has also published two collections of poetry, Finding a Way (2016) and Serendipity (2023). A third book, Sunrise in a Rabbit Hole, will be published in 2025.
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