Oki

Lotus & The Apocalypse https://amzn.eu/d/ir54UBi

The Review 

Like Rainier Maria Rilke’s “Sonnets To Orpheus”, these eighteen poems by Austin were composed all at once. Exploring mental health issues like suicidal thoughts, drug and alcohol abuse, the idea of the apocalypse becomes a personal event. Arresting the reader immediately with a phrase at once dramatic and surreal:

The World Will End Tonight/the weatherman says/

What follows is a series of ruminations whose titles begin “Lotus and…”, fear, love, summer, sex, depression, another day, oblivion,  honesty, 

Here there is what he calls an “interlude”. Then the series of “Lotus and….” continues with hallucinations, the meteors, booze,  …, depression, insomnia, the holidaze, the crash, loss. Like “The Prophet” by Kahlil Gibran, these titles suggest that Lotus will be giving us life lessons. Subversively, this is not the case, and all the better for it. The idea is turned on its head. 

The poems switch from first to third person, almost as if Lotus is looking at himself from the outside.

terrified about what could happen

before the sun rises.

It’s like becoming a balloon

that’s blown up

with helium instead of breath,

a balloon that’s let go of,

a balloon that flies towards the stars

 until it pops. 

(from Lotus and Honesty)

Throughout the book are references to looking up at the stars, to rising towards the stars, often with the idea of death and dying.  The book’s final lines are:

Lotus closed his eyes and saw nothing/
but the color of wind.

This book repays on rereading. Highly recommended.