Copy and Paste

I was looking for the answers.

Young Earth had just got old.

In a search for cure of cancers.

No one knew or truth be told.

I was reading at the Google.

Hummed a song that Kanye dealt.

I got drunk and played her bugle.

No one cared bout how I felt.

There are answers. I keep trying.

All this time that I could waste.

At the end, there’s no denying.

It’s all God. No copy-paste.

Dennis Mantin

I Unafraid (2017)

I was a boy when people asked me…

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”

‘Unafraid.’ I thought.

“I don’t know.” I answered.

I just wanted people to stop hitting me. I just didn’t want to be afraid all the time.

I grew tall and people asked me.

“Why are you so angry?”

“Why do you drink so much?”

“I don’t know. ” I lied.

I am 58 years old and I am a father and I know what I want. To teach her and show her love and support her and be her friend… and paint and make films.

“I will tell story.”

Said I.

Dennis Mantin

The Problem of Memory

I remembered everything dramatic until I didn’t. I let that shit go, which is a monumental gift.

However, I  remember certain individuals from my childhood who, at the time, I thought were unreasonably cruel. Now I realize they were just human. Nothing more or less. So, to those people that I criticized on the eastcoast!,

All Apologies!”

Dennis Mantin

The Sheltered Life of the Pup Brought Up Around the Fireplace.

I have not been privy to such a way of comfort and luxury, and the cool light, easy, relaxed frame of mind that accompanies such demons…

I suspect not many have prior to this century, and for those that did, I suspect their ancestry are in some way in charge of the current shitshow.

Cities are burning in paradise, and the leaders are seemingly suggesting that in the land of hope and opportunities and prosperity and ingenuity, that next time, there will be water in the fire hydrants…

It’s really difficult to know what exactly is going on without sounding crazy or sinister.

Leadership is now reduced to mansplaining, and in the words of Mr Arthur Fleck, maybe just maybe we are getting what we fucking deserve.

Dennis Mantin

Perspectives

I look at life differently now.

Back in the beginning, I knew everything.

Now I know I know very little.

I know my life is my experience, and I appreciate my experiences more every day.

I love being a parent, maybe as much as I love my kid, and some days, it is something other than love. It is the experience of…

Today, I love my kid!

Today, I see the importance of me trying to make someone else happy.

Most everything has advantages and disadvantages. It’s all about perspectives.

Dennis Mantin

Copy and Paste

I was looking for the answers.

Young Earth had just got old.

In a search for cure of cancers.

No one knew or truth be told.

I was reading at the Google.

Hummed a song that Kanye dealt.

I got drunk and played her bugle.

No one cared bout how I felt.

There are answers. I keep trying.

All this time that I could waste.

At the end, there’s no denying.

It’s all God. No copy-paste.

Dennis Mantin

Ironic Cake

I’ve been listening to the masses.

They be trying to bring me down.

I’ve been taking master classes.

Ever since the blues dropped into town.

They are talking about oppression.

Like, it’s shiny and brand new.

So much horror in that lesson.

That ironic cake to chew.

They are raging, eyes are blurry.

Tears they fall like April rain.

Going nowhere in such a hurry.

Like they just discovered pain.

I’ve been looking for a chorus. That won’t break us into songs. Maybe something just to bore us. Take our rights back from the wrongs…

Dennis Mantin

The Year I Went Insane

The north coast of Nova Scotia is somewhere between the middle of nowhere and God’s country.

Somehow, I was still there when I was 18, and she’d been dead for 7 years. I would still look for her whenever I was in a crowd of people. Straining searching. Imagining that she had faked her death to get away from me. My mother. By the fall of 1977, I guess I figured she was really dead. All of this I kept to myself. Winding wrapped tight. In my tiny bedroom on a twin bed in a mobile trailer on an acre of land at the edge of Deception River is where the nightmare began…

I ripped out the window screen at the foot of the bed one night and the screen at the head of the bed the next. Screaming some nonsensical rage about “I’ll get you! You motherfuckers!” The next morning the fingernails were torn and bloodied from ripping out screens. Both windows smashed.

I could hear the breathing coming from something somewhere. I held my breath and lay still on my bed, making sure it wasn’t me. I looked under the bed and under the trailer. Nothing. I was alone… except for whatever was breathing. It felt like it was coming from inside me. I had never been so terrified. I forgot to pray. I forgot God.

After a few days and nights of this, I realized that I had to leave that bed, that bedroom,that trailer, that acre, that river.

I left and never returned…

Dennis Mantin