Disputing My Transmogrification
I awake shouting, yet again, I am not Gregor Samsa…
realizing in unyielding fear and sadness I am being

Remastered
	by rigorous and unimaginative technicians of the structured
	my thoughts, my dreams, even my most soul-protecting poems
	remastered

Reconstituted
	by overly efficient and nondescript bureaucrats of orderliness
	my vital statistics, historical records, even my accomplishments 
	reconstituted

Reshaped
	by zealous and far-travelling space creatures of mutation
	my body, my face, even my inner organs 
	reshaped

Knowledge commandeered, wisdom downgraded, my voice upstaged
yet shreds of memory and a few photographs for what passes as a life
clutched in mind and back pocket, existential and absurd reference points

The timepieces everywhere relentless, stentorian in their assertions, 
as I fill my waking moments shouting I am not Gregor Samsa…

The methodical technicians, meticulous bureaucrats, magical space creatures
working all hours night and day to remaster, reconstitute, reshape 
who I was, scraping painstakingly my synapses, neurons, psyche
appropriating my body and being vital portion by essential portion
leaving me searching for a new hiding place far from fear and sadness  
where I can existentially even absurdly remaster, reconstitute, reshape
my misshapen body and being into someone who resembled 
what I used to be on a good day, a day without shouting I am not Gregor Samsa, 
yet again, yet again, yet again.


 


When I Used to Be, or Not to Be, an Absurdist Scribbler, Back in the Day
“My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go.”
—Oscar Wilde’s attributed last words, on 30 November 1900, but you really had to be there.

Back in the day, daylight darkened in memory
standing in a long line to see a play
Waiting for Godot or Fiddler on the Roof
I can’t remember clear as day, back in the day,
a woman with a ski-slope nose
like my sweet sister if I had a sister
you know how memory can pull your chain
left and right, up and down,
a teeter-totter of existence or a seesaw of being
and she said, then and there, after the play
your place or the bowels of Hell
intimacy awaits us, my future lover.

After a pregnant pause to end all pregnant pauses,
I asked, can’t I have both, my place or the bowels of Hell?
and she, scratching her ski-slope nose said okay, let’s go in
to Waiting for Godot or Fiddler on the Roof
I can’t say for sure, but I recall undressing in her small bedroom,
boudoir in the bowels of Hell, with its end-of-time gloomy wallpaper
the same, she said, Oscar Wilde saw as he was dying
and proclaimed either the wallpaper or I have to go,
paraphrase of course, but check the devouring internet,
as for me, I wrote a poem about her ski-slope nose and intimacy
but for the life of me, I can’t say for sure if I ever published
that wretched piece of memory doggerel.


 
An Angry Barking Dog

Alone in my small-windowed room
a morning of writing half-hearted
love letters and misguided laments
I hear a city roaming dog 
barking in the distance
barking louder and angrier
than any dog I’d ever heard.

What could be behind the loudness 
and anger I wonder
the way I wonder about
too fierce rainstorms
when the forecast had been
for unseasonable serenity.

Have I ever been
that angry to shout
or yell at the world?

I go to the window
and see a distant shape
running back and forth
unsure of its size
but deciding the dog is small
but distance plays tricks
on the eye despite the loudness.

How can such smallness
express such anger
and loudness?

I yell at the movement
to shut up and the dog 
suddenly stops,
amazed by the efficacy
of my voice.

The dog runs toward my window
runs with uncanny speed
and stops under my window
neither large nor small
I decide in closeness
and resumes barking
louder than before
testing the laws of science
and the auditory.

I listen to the anger
and wonder even more
then yell again
louder than before
the barking and the yelling
a duet of either madness
or the need for companionship
and worldly comprehension.

I hope no one is listening.

About the Author:

Canadian poet, fiction writer, and playwright J. J. Steinfeld lives on Prince Edward Island, where he is patiently waiting for Godot’s arrival and a phone call from Kafka. While waiting, he has published 25 books, including An Unauthorized Biography of Being (Stories, Ekstasis Editions, 2016), Absurdity, Woe Is Me, Glory Be (Poetry, Guernica Editions, 2017), A Visit to the Kafka Café (Poetry, Ekstasis Editions, 2018), Gregor Samsa Was Never in The Beatles (Stories, Ekstasis Editions, 2019), Morning Bafflement and Timeless Puzzlement (Poetry, Ekstasis Editions, 2020), Somewhat Absurd, Somehow Existential (Poetry, Guernica Editions, 2021), Acting on the Island (Stories, Pottersfield Press, 2022), As You Continue to Wait (Poetry, Ekstasis Editions, 2022), and My Post-Holocaust Second Generation Voice: History / Memory / Identity (Poetry, Ekstasis Editions, 2025); his short stories and poems have appeared in numerous periodicals and anthologies internationally, and over 60 of his one-act plays and a handful of full-length plays have been performed in Canada and the United States.

Feature image by Shavin Peiries on Unsplash