Life in the Margins

By Ed Teja

Published by Ed Teja at Smashwords
Copyright 2012 by Ed Teja

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Acknowledgments

“Blues For Carl W.” was first published in Northwoods Journal, Summer 1999
“Curious Trope” was first published in ART:MAG, Summer 1995
“The Latecomer” was first published in Northwoods Journal, Summer 1998
"For Raymond Carver" was first published in Whistling Shade.

Table of Contents

Life in the Margins

A Look Inside

Five Comments

Say, Nietzsche...

Public Property

Time and Motion

Curious Trope

Blues for Carl W.

The Latecomer

The Girl on the Bus

For Raymond Carver

Differences

Judgment Day

While Waiting

About the author

Greetings from the margins

The view from the margins is quite different from that observed along the main highways and byways of life. In the main stream, the water flows gently; here at the edges, in the margins, are the eddies, the side channels that collect debris captured from the main channel. It can be quiet and calm at times; turbulent at others. It isn't better or worse here, but it is quite different and not suited to some.

The margins are probably a better place for adventure. The days don't run together, blurring into sameness. The unexpected happens fairly frequently, and the air is fresh and exhilarating. I have drifted in and out of the margins for my entire life, finding lovers and friends in both channels, which perhaps makes me acutely aware of the differences. Now I am tucked back into the margins, with only a small internet glimpse of the mainstream. These fifteen poems, written over the years, capture the sense and experience of a life spent living mostly in its margins.

This book is dedicated to friends, family and lovers both in the margins and elsewhere, but most of all, Dagny.

Ed Teja

Kampot, Cambodia 2012

The cover photo is one I took of a house around the corner from the one we rented in Koh Kong, Cambodia.

Life in the Margins

There is life in the margins,
these open white spaces of existence where order is less ordered,
& positioning less precise.

Not for us

row upon row of neat type, attempts at verbalizing things, articulating clearly what we mean, or making pyrotechnic graphic displays
of serious content.

We float free,

playing around a caption here, dodging a stodgy footnote there
(usually found sitting mo­rosely, chewing disgust­ingly on some fat "IBID" or other like it was some scholarly mantra).

Fortunately for us, creative use of white space is in vogue, giving us plenty of room to play in.

There's room enough for everyone,
course it doesn't suit everyone and it's a wise being what knows when having a place
is better than having space.

Life in the margins isn't easy,
what with no columns to protect you, no extra leading to ensure you got enough headroom. But it's okay.

You can

b r e a t h e

here.

A Look Inside

Temporary madness becomes a way of life all too quickly
transcending all I've wanted: a car, a job (maybe two), a wife.

It rolls across the plains, steamrollers my ideals.
Now, somewhat flattened by its awesome power,
I rather like the way it feels.

Descending a staircase, nude, to the basement of my mind,
I sort through the junk and the treasures stored there, hoping
to find something worth keeping, taking out into the daylight,
something that might last, outlast me.

Elements and totems from my past abound,
but nothing strikes my fancy.
At least not very hard.

The future, its hopes and worries, I keep on other floors,
carefully isolated, protected by sealed doors and windows
from the mildew and rot that permeates elsewhere.