Due South Flashfiction Community

I read this first when it was posted, and it made me go out and find Eliot's poem, and reread.

I'm really impressed with how you got the idea in the first place, and then how well you executed it: This is both a really clever pastiche of its original, and a beautiful poem in itself. I find "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" to be a rather uncomfortable poem to read, maybe because it spells out my worst fears for how to live out a life. But the love song of S. Ray Kowalski seems more tender, sad, but also more feisty.

And, because I can't help it, a couple of favourites:

"Let's just go then, you and me,
Where the northern lights fight it out above us
Like boxers duking it out in a ring;
Let's just go, where there are no streets
Just us freaks
And restless nights in tents"

"To lead you to an overwhelming question...
C'mon, don't ask, "What is it?"
Let's just go and fuckin' --"

"And when I'm begging for it, sprawling, wet with sin,
When I'm pinned and wriggling on the wall
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?"

"Shall I say, I've gone at night through lonely streets
And watched the smoke that rises from cigarettes
Of lonely men in t-shirts, leaning against bricks?

I shoulda been a contender
Dancing my way around rings, not floors."

Okay, enough from me :) Thank you for sharing this!