Buffalo, NY—During a recent lake vacation while watching a hawk methodically circle the sky, local author P.A.Kane (Written In The Stars: The Book Of Molly; Leaving Jackson Wolf and coming soon: The Last Playlist—A Sonic Epitaph) found his long dormant poetic voice. Kane hadn’t written a poem since grade school when his muse led him to write about a man from Nantucket and the beautiful girls in church he prayed to see naked some day. 

Kane said it felt great to find this new form of expression and is trying to put himself in situations where he can find inspiration. In addition to the poems written at the lake on vacation he’s penned a series of grocery store poems . . .

Extra Virgin Olive Oil
With a look of despair
In aisle 13B
I see her mouth the words
“Before the pandemic
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Was $5.99
Now it’s $8.99
Fuck Danny Wegman
I’m going to Aldi.”

Donna Kane, his wife, is not thrilled about this new outburst of creativity. “At first it was kind of cool,” she said. “He wrote some lines about the fires I made on vacation (see below). But now he’s out listening to the birds in the morning and is talking about the heather, the hearth and the rhythmic waves of his aching heart. Instead of walking around with his head in the clouds maybe he could learn to put the fucking toilet seat down and start picking up his towels off the bathroom floor.”

As the 1.5 millionth ranked Amazon author, Kane has only written novels, but isn’t questioning this move away prose or where his muse will take him. He knows better than to force things and just tries to ride the waves of his imagination without thinking too much or judging it.

Thoughts
Deep in your head
There is a game being played 
With no rules , with no constraints
Which maybe leads you to that night
You drank too much tequila
And peed yourself
Or that time you saw her
In the heather
And kissed her by the hearth 
As the birds sang in the morning
While you were overcome 
By the rhythmic waves of your aching heart
You try to turn it off, you try to shut it down
But it bleeds
From your fingers onto the paper
And needs to be free
Like those little lions 
From that tv movie 
In the 70’s called “Born Free.”

Kane is actively shopping his poems around to agents and publishers.

More P.A.Kane poetry . . .

One Match . . .
At the edge of the lake
It started with some
Carefully assembled twigs
And Camp Counselor knowledge 
Learned in the greenest days of life

When it’s done, when it’s ready
It’s a mountain shaped from logs
With uneven, broken edges
And guts made of those twigs
Ascending from the rocky ground 

As dusk settles into night 
She turns to me in my chair and says
“One match . . .”
As if she’s Michael Jordan
Calling out a three 

Subtly the guts start to percolate
But in no time the whole mountain 
Is all chimney red and halloween orange
Alas . . .
She is Michael Jordan

From there we sit in our chairs
Breathing in the fragrant timber
Listening to the nightsounds
Looking on with sweet glazed eyes 
At the mountain of fire

We don’t say much, but at some point
As the fire grows too large 
She turns to me again
And with that big Camp Counselor smile 
She says, “Whoa.”

But it’s not a “Whoa,” of
This is too big 
This is too large
It’s a “Whoa,” of pride
One Match . . . Michael Jordan

We turn on some music 
As the mountain collapses in on itself
We still don’t say much
But she’ll get up 
To reposition the diminishing logs

And while she works says to me 
With a certain smugness  
Like I’m a some dimwitted rube
Who couldn’t start a fire without gasoline
“A fire needs airflow, it needs to breathe”

Eventually the night ends
She separates what remains of the logs
We pack up our things and with a deep satisfaction 
We return to the cottage

In the morning, our last morning
I go to sit by the water a last time
Approaching, I smell the smoldering wood
And see a smoking fingernail in the ash
One Match . . . Michael Jordan

There’s a song lyric
After the fire, the fire still burns   
But I’d rather 
I’d rather have another fire
Than go back.

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