Lutin malsain

«et maintenant, Chicoria!» announces the french d.j.

: and the flamenco guitar begins, soon

feverishly showing its best hands

in the hope of drowning out

the battle in my brain –

ô comme je veux que la musique soit vainqueur,

respite from these masochistic imps

working overtime pour mon esprit, mon tout.

i dare the andulusian beats to kill this beast and plead:

¡por favor, señor Corea, take me far, far away from here!

Power of the Family Tree

They were putting up power lines
when it happened. Loose cable,
my great-grandfather the first
and best conductor
of electricity.

A million volts
of harnessed lightning
thundered through his body,
must have stopped his heart.
He woke up in a hospital bed.

(My grandfather says the smell
was beyond describing, after
the gangrene set in.
Hates hospitals
to this day.)

He lost six fingers and both legs.

He outlived
his wife, remarried.
Mary Margaret, his new wife,
sometimes pushed him around town
in a wheelbarrow. Once, he tipped out.

Half the man he was, his dignity still
intact. The basement window he landed
against, cracked. Today, I'm
trimming trees. Think of him
when I get to the stump.

aftr th fall 11

u pikd me up aftr th fall
helld me in yr arms
& i cr-eyed in2 u
yet u blaymed yrself
four my fall az if
u hold sum sort uv
blak field arownd u
az if u shud hav
preeventd it

i want u to kno
tht i waz ment 2 fall
i waz ment 2 b brokn
sumwher safe sumwher
not afghnstan
not a lone aban dund
but nr u, yr strong
arms 2 pik me up
hld me tight
now my war
iz finelly dun.

It was, like, like:

You: a tree full of sparrows
me: a house with no walls
us: an instruction book
on how to write instruction books
written entirely in comic sans

chasing rabbits

running running chasing 

rabbits chasing fleeting memories 

wishes fleeting moments of light incandescent 

enlightenment found and lost freedom fleeting fickle 

click-click lights out

Late Night Soccer Match

The wind blows, or doesn't blow. It's May, but today
still cold. We hunch against gusts, bad calls, scored goals
and general indifference. The small crowd hushed, the keeper falls,
whistle blows. Ref calls interference.
Under sodium lights, rain falls only
in the beams. Like watching movies on drive-in
nights, dusty particles flickering towards
the screen. The artificial turf peels
the skin when our midfield takes a dive. Really
fucking cold outside, but good to be alive.

Sympathy

I think I wanted to surrender.

To be divested:

 

look, I have a real problem now,

your petty daily indignities have no matter.

The form my absolution took

was a million forms, was a moving

sheet of microscopic arthropods,

was invisible but in my head as

solid as if fashionless teams of marathoners

trundled over my flesh.

Look. Look! Of course

you can't see them, I think

I saw one once I caught on a piece of

Scotch tape, it was red and tiny just like

the internet says.

 

All I wanted was to be believed until

I was ready to be done believing.

For the bugs to take over and agree

to be my perpetual alibi.

To stop scratching, and yet,

to feel scratched.

To make it all take a cue

and fade to the invisible,

leave me alone with my skin and mind and

know it's not my fault.

 

i try to find words,

A-N-Y

to fill in the hollow where

these feelings and images live

.i can't.            a  sh

orted wire ? white on

white, no

squiggly lines lying about

to mean this or that or –

            is my heart empty ?

or maybe my mind has been swallowed

whole by, Swallowed Whole by –

words

wOrDS WorDs & more and i &

i try to find

He-Who-Flies-By-Night

"In a lifetime of deceit, love of the wilderness may have been his only genuine emotion."- Maclean's

Christened Archibald by a 13 year old mother,
abandoned by both parents —
no wonder you flew to another people for kinship.
Doesn't everyone dream at least once of being an Indian,
except for Indians? You began
with White Owl, moved on to Grey Owl,
an admission that nothing was quite so black/white.
Except that you dyed your hair,
hennaed your skin.

Which one was I, when you filled out
the "married" section of your army papers —
the "yes" or the "no", both scratched out?
A partner for each digit on your hand,
three who would bear you children
to abandon, just as you'd been left at age four.
Three daughters, and little Johnny,
who didn't know until he was nine
that the man he called "Archie Baloney"
was his father.

But the day you killed your last beaver
the mewling of her kits from the lodge
was more than the orphaned boy within
could take. You put down
your guns and snares, picked up
a pen. For this act of atonement,
may you escape eternal dam-nation.

This happened

[Thanks!]

the spruce shed

Under the spruce lie his dreams for another day,
a workless day impossible now the tasks he sets
a field to plough, a world to feed, to raise
to raise the grain, seed, germinate, he must,
must work his field from dusk to dusk, not dream
of rusted '48 Fords nor the Goldwing 1974
nor the woman whose hand he holds
as he takes her through his spruce shed
walking back from the fields, his dinner ready
his wine poured, his bed with her
like the spruce shed exposes his heart,
the elements, yet sweet and hot,
he has a world to feed, and tasks to set
his dreams should wait he says. But must they?

Barry's Image

 

It goes like this.

You finish the book. You put it down on the bedside table.

You pick it up and open to the first page.

You put it down, closed, on the bedside table.

You pick it up. You place your palm

on the cover, light. You turn it over

and read the marketing copy.

You open it up and smell it.

You place it on the bedside table

and turn out the lamp

and stare at the ceiling.

You turn and sees its spine

facing you, some dim

blur of its title. You reach. It is where you find

 

the name, the colour, the resistance,

the form for this thing that inhabits you.

Could you kiss a book and mean it?

Marrying a book means

marrying all the stories in the world.

I think. They would not let me.

I held the paper to my chest and tugged

to absorb it into my heart.

 

Oral Extraction

At Elbow, called this because it was at the crook
of the South Saskatchewan, there,
since time immemorial, we gathered
at Buffalo Child Stone. Mistassini,
the sleeping bison.

In 1960, the Gardiner Dam Project
said this stone was in the way. Like the people
who gathered there. We rallied, prayed, sang songs to save Mistassini,
but deafness has been a longstanding ailment
to the men-who-have-fingers-in-their-ears.

Sent by the province to blow up our sacred stone
contractors were confounded by the subsurface,
extending over forty feet
into the ground like the root
of a wisdom tooth.

I ache. Into a million pieces
our bison was shattered. Scattered
to the four directions. We placed
a circle of some of them around Poundmaker's
grave. Of pieces, I myself
have sixteen.


"In my Cree Oral History collection is a great interview with "Asiniyewkiysik" aka Ed Poorman, Kawacatoose First Nation who was interviewed in 1976. At the time of this interview, Asiniyewkiysik was 100 years old which meant that he was born in the year Treaty # 6 was signed at Fort Carleton. Anyway, he talked about the time when he was a little boy and he would go with his grandfather to attend ceremonies at this big rock ( see photo ) that was located at the Elbow / crook of the South Saskatchewan River. Apparently, First Nations had been gathering at this ceremonial site for many many years. In Cree, this big rock was called "Buffalo Child Stone" and to others it was referred to as "Mistassini" as it strongly resembled a sleeping bison. And, yes, there is a story behind the name...and I will share it at another time. But, in the 1960`s, the Province of Sask decided to blow up Mistasinni as it was in the way of the building of the Gardener Dam. Many First Nation people did their best to try to stop the destruction of Mistassini including my late father Wilfred Tootoosis. He worked with Dr. Zenon Pohoretzki and Dr. Buffy St. Marie in a desperate fund raising effort so that Mistassini could be moved to safe location....but, it was all to no avail. I have photographs of my late father singing a song on a hand drum with Cree people from Poundmaker, Little Pine and Sweet Grass dancing around the rock....and this was just shortly before Mistassini was blown up into a million little pieces. In 1966, when Chief Poundmaker`s body was brought home from Blackfoot Crossing, Alberta by our Elders... pieces of Mistassini were placed in a circle around his grave. ( personally, I have 16 pieces of Mistassini )......44 years later, in 2009...I met a woman who told me that in 1965, her husband had worked as a surveyor for the company that had been contracted to blow up Mistassinin. She told me that the white contractors were amazed that when they dug up Mistassini prior to blowing it up, they found that the bottom of Mistassini extended over 40 feet deep into the ground and that this part was shaped very much like the root of a wisdom tooth.....just thought I`d share this with you folks.............have a good day!...Ty" - Tyrone Tootoosis, Sr.

Reminder

I'm not sure this reminder is completely necessary, since we've been pretty good about labelling our posts, but here it is as a matter of routine: Please label all your posts.

Also, some of you who responded to my pre-May Day e-mail expressed some interest in making the site a bit more private, so this is just to let you know that it will no longer appear on search engines. However, you can still direct your friends here; others can still read the blog, they'll just have to find it through one of us rather than through Google et al. If you have any concerns about this, let me know.

aftr th fall 10

th brokn hand plays tag team wth th brokn brain brok broke broken snap snap hand snap brain
then why tell me why m I so dmned so hap hap happy again?

A New Life

This is your house and you're lying on the couch.

(understand: there is no house and you are standing)

It is sunny and the yellow walls wrap

Your tired mind with warmth

(you are outside looking in)

Freedom found, you play with ideas of what next

(reminder: freedom's just another word for nothing left)

A scuttling sound disturbs your peace

And you must rise from your dream

(this was your life last February)

For someone has taken off with the bag

Which holds the goods: dry socks, yesterday's bread, blanket, cigarettes

(you've taken up smoking again cause what kills you seems less important now, somehow)

One

(after hearing "Sure on this shining night" played by the Manitoba Honour Band)

Music on the border of melancholy.
Tension and a long release, slow
exhale and drift. A trumpet solo,
clear and remote: the question of an I
alone, awake to wonder, overflowing
with self and sight.
The reply in counterpoint
of reeds echoing flutes
over slow-pacing horns,
in the disciplined breath drawn
at the baton's lift. This lyric of solitude
played wordless for hundreds of hearers.
Musicians who've learned to unify
through tuning. Articulate. Attentive
with every nerve of fingertip, muscle of lip.

Monday in May

Cracked chimney brickwork and curling shingles, pinecones litter
rooftops and lawns like discarded toys. A west wind
strokes the nap of the long grassblades with harp-rippling fingers.
Riot of new leaves like fans at a stadium silently cheering on passersby.
A cabbage moth fickly floats, flits. Crowds of dandelions throng
the edge of the sidewalk, heads bobbing. Schoolbus cruises by, giant
predatory whale, swallowing spring's natural inhabitants.

Surviving Mother's Day

She stands in the drug store,
stares at the dwindling stock
of Mother's Day cards.

People of all ages and colors
jostle her as they
sort through the slim pickings,
having left it so late.

She grabs one at random.
"Thank you for all you've given me..."
Back onto the shelf, try again:
"You were always there for me..."

She discards it with a shudder,
remembers now why she has waited
so long to take part in this annual rite.
Steps back out of the crush,
watches the others as they nod,
smile, make their selections.

Realizes with a short sharp smack
to the heart
that for some people these words
carry real meaning.
She begins to sweat, sway,
pushes her way back out to the street.

Even out in the sunlight she shivers,
fearing the wrath of a card unsent,
fearing more what will happen if
she signs her name to one more lie.

Reclining Woman Reading

They never have the postcard you want:

Olga in a blue dress, book open,

on the floor like schoolgirls write in

diaries in their plush carpeted rooms.

As soon I saw her I thought Alice:

the blond hair, blue dress, girlish aspect;

but the window behind her

has a frame so dark

it appears barred.

The job of the writer is to free the reader

from her prison house. That's paraphrased, I think,

unless somehow I've got it

exactly from the book I was reading.

They never have the postcard you want, this time,

the poster girl was Dora Maar,

all clown-colours and ragmatag.

Olga was a Ukrainian ballerina,

long legs wasted lying

on the floor before the window bars,

pretending to read the book he gave her.

Have you noticed in all these paintings

of women reading

the artist rarely shows us

what book it is.

 

Remembering Light

Do you remember when Annie left me her bone

before going home

with you?

Slid it between the sheets while she panted

her goodbye In my ear -

how sure she must have been that

she would see me again.

Those days were full of wishes, of

finding hope in details, like

the way sunlight swept across the floor

while we prepared our meal the night before,

carelessly sipping Australian wine;

dessert on the boardwalk, blue and green

ice cream melting on her paws, three tongues

slurping flavoured dreams.

But memory colours things, doesn't it, my love?
We forget too easily why goodbye

comes with the morning,

or how sometimes

words are just words

and light is only light.

Another holiday slides past

like a prayer bead
between the fingers.
Acknowledged or ignored,
another day is crossed off
the stack of finite calendars
piled by the bedside at the end
of our life. The taste of chapstick
suddenly sends me to a summer: age twelve.
I am walking in the rain at Waskesiu, a postcard
of Grey Owl clutched under red plastic poncho. Raindrops
taste of sunscreen and mosquito repellant as they run down
my face. Waft of damp pinepitch, and potatoes roasted on a portable
trailer barbeque. Distant car doors slam. A raven slaps the air above,
crying "Fraud, fraud," and the postcard of Archie Bellamy falls face down
in the mud. We never make the trip to see his cabin, the portage too far for
someone with this many younger brothers. His hidden English heritage was like
the trapdoor he cut in his cabin floor for the Beaver People. One day he just fell

through.
Disappeared.

Heart

Small appliance.

Balled fist, fingers going white,
bloody marks on your palm –
suckerpunch.

Meat on a plate,
spoiling.

Fussy dud.
To be disposed of.
Red/blue wires crossed.

House
on fire.

Rotten egg and the hand cupping it
and the arm pitching it.

Poke in the eye.

Jack in the box
with a bent lid. Its jaunty tune.

Fine print.

Boy in the closet
with a gun.

Bloody handful.