Petering out

Going out, like Peter, humbly,
not exactly petrified but
stone-faced at least,
solemn as the spring
drowns in its sorrows
its lost weekends, its standing
pools filling with exponential eggs
hatching bloodlust.
I prepare to be drained,
upside-down,
pained,
undone
by decadent caesars
and not enough summer
to avoid knowing
how it ends.

March 5: Saint Adrian

I forgive you:
though the Captain got his hook in you,
you neglected to die, but wriggled about
unsure of this air we mortals breathe.
The sense to expire quickly is not
a common quality among fish,
or martyrs,
or folks with or without health insurance.
Would a bus have been a better way to go?
Forget the hook – hop up and slide under!
Forget the lion, which followed the hook,
roaring dominoes down:
it dug in, sunk its, flopped
you on the welcome mat, proudly,
You opened an eye.
No angler nor cat lady came
brandishing a club.

Will you sign up to be my assistant?
I am a good magician, only slightly left-handed.
Lord, have mercy on a saw.

Mr. Statue of Liberty Addresses the Nation

It was a shotgun wedding—
the guards chased me out of her when they heard me read religious literature aloud.
Most nights I had to be content with a 12-inch model,
the details imperfect, the surface too new.
Nights too hot for compromise
or too cold for deprivation,
I snuck out to see the lights shimmer on the water,
imaged her crown like a superhero might at the climax of the movie,
as the scene of a pitched battle,
as the brush with quick death, and then out again
on the other side.
Eventually even the plainclothes officers grew to like me--
the ones really looking for the nuts—
for I am charming, and wear my allegiance on my chest.

Mrs. Eiffel Tower Crashes Her Jet

Picket fence, barbed wire,
arrows and fighter jets,
latticework of metal going up, up, up!
Everything comes to a point, eventually,
except, what was it, two parallel lines? Forever
distant, unable to kiss, though on the horizon
they may give this illusion.

Distance to the tower: too far.
The tower asks for her intentions.
She is silent and thrumming, thinking
of the architecture of love, resolved
to point her jealous hunk of metal
to ground.

Mrs. Berlin Wall Cleans her Guillotine Collection

She remembers the day the bulldozers came, plastered
all over Svenska
Dagbladet.
Young people who, in another life, would have been hipsters,
crushing it to concrete turds
with their stolen sledgehammers,
her heart with it, ventricle ripped from aorta
and aorta from ventricle.
She clutched at her stomach that day, and every day after,
keeping the name, though married to rubble,
an historical curiosity. The venom,
she had taken it, the blame,
she had shared it, but this—unforeseen,
unprepared, a stake, blood dripping from her mouth,
her body to ashes.

Today she cleans the guillotines.
Blunt, and smaller than you pictured them,
but free of dust and lint. They filled her basement each by each,
since that day, begging for someone to love them.

Poem for Lunch

Lunch at 11:00, on a weekend, is brunch, is large,
is fat and sweet, is me in a tight dress.
At 11:00 on a weekday, lunch is a hungry lunch,
is an unsatisfactory-breakfast or I-was-awakened-on-rooster-time
lunch, is a by-2:00-I’ll-probably-need-a-chocolate-bar lunch.
At noon, lunch is a prescriptive lunch, because
that’s when they wrote it on the schedule.
At 1:00 it’s a ladies who lunch.
By 2:00 it’s a fainting lunch, but by 3:00
I probably did it on purpose, a delayed lunch
to make the work accomplished sweeter,
the afterlunch shorter.
Soup is a lunch for winter.
Salad is not much of a lunch.
Tim Hortons makes terrible lunches but
they are cheap and I think I have three dollars in my desk.
Light cream cheese is for wusses.
11:20. Goodlunch.

the moment it happened

----okay, this is REALLY rough and I know that verb tense and point of view are screwed up, among other things----



the moment it happened, I was allowed to purchase
mutual funds on-line at midnight, the moment it happened

is not clear, it’s a cloudy night
no moon, nothing
barely discernible via internal streetlamps
a moment blurring across foggy

synapses, a symptom of its happening
jello underarms and bra strap fat
tiny kicks in the head all night, a bed
crowded and full of dried milk crumbs
an old tired dog at the foot
just wants to sleep, please

the moment the soapy buildup under your ring caused an allergic reaction
the moment unguents became important to stave off brittle faces and then
ridiculous again because you don’t even have time
to poop, let alone primp

the moment you are too old to enter a nightclub
quickly turns into foot surgery

but you wouldn’t want to dance with them anyway—
it’s better on one foot,
hopping with the baby
hopping on hot sand
all the way to the shade

Too much?

The succubus sucked
the sugar cane, what else
do succubi do
but suck? Sucked succulent
sugar juice. Stole
into the room unseen and sucked
the cane and faced the ceiling,
shrieking bloody sugary glee.
Sugar cube between the teeth for tea,
Russian-style slurping.
Delightful.
She swept up
and away, sweet and full,
sweet and wrinkled, laughing
at the flaccid sugar cane behind her.

Poem for The Canada Council

I wish to apply for a grant to write some poems.
My theme is “poetry.” My approach is to have line breaks,
most of the time. Sometimes not. I don’t know. We’ll see.
I will be sure to write poems that are diverse and inclusive.
They will be on diverse topics.
They will include a wide variety of words.
Some examples of words I would like to use:
arrogant, crustacean, Peruvian, refrain;
offside, ivory, rubato, Rastafarian.
Sugar cane, succubus. Widow’s peak, sousaphone.
Monastery, rivalry, vivisection, coop.

You get the idea, Mr. Council.
I am particularly fond of the letter “v,”
a letter certainly deserving of more exposure in the publishing field.
I am including in my budget travel research funds to visit the best libraries in the world,
and call upon Seamus Heaney for tea,
and generally live life to the fullest.
“Life” is my secondary theme.
My tertiary theme is “thought.”
Please hurry Mr. Council.
I am having a fleeting moment of inspiration
right
now



-----
SO BUSY lately I haven't had time to read all the posts, and I missed posting on Sunday! Weekends might be a lost cause for me. Will try to catch up on reading tonight.

Checking into Chateau Laurier, 1:30 a.m.

Skulking criminals with a crime to find, we step

tentative across the threshold of a century.

The words do not thrill—“railway hotel,”

the spectre of a wooden platform and dusty sheets—

and thrill is not the word for this ceiling

where our guilty expressions search

for a deity to forgive us, for something.

Something classical drifts around.

Light and cheerful in a way that portends

rivers of blood gushing down the halls.

Empty, marble, echo.

Stop the suitcase squeak. Hush, wait,

for the murderous pin to drop.

Flower

Only eat flowers when daddy says so.

Don’t trust me on edible plants,

bird identification, or Chicago style. I’m hopeless.

Don’t trust him on grocery shopping,

buttoning women’s clothing, or exchange of pleasantries.

Actually don’t trust me on those either.

I guess what I’m saying is: Trust No One,

a phrase you heard often and early,

Agents Mulder and Scully batting their eyelashes

on the complete DVD set trying to keep me

awake in the chair at 4 a.m.

Dandelions, he said—your dad, not Agent Mulder—

are completely useful plants. You can eat them all up,

once you dig and scrub up that ass-bastard root.

And he tried to feed you the petals, tiny strips

of that same delicate fibre better flowers make their

better petals of. You didn’t like it. Good on you.

Now, if you ever meet a poisoned apple,

or an evil stepmother,

you will know what to do.

Poem for my poor hands

from blank to cat scratch blanket

greasy teenager’s to bone-dry post-birth

cracked creased crazy

bitch’s

----

I could go on but won't at present.

Girl brushes doll’s impassable lips

First learn this:
imagining what is not there
pretending what you are not.

If it’s made of atoms, you will figure it out.
If you can stick your hand in it, whack your head on it,
put it in your mouth, or get your nose stuck to it in the cold.

If it’s not there, though, it’s worth working at.
You have a toothbrush, and a baby, and the baby
has no teeth, but you can brush them anyway.
Next step: loose the toothbrush.
Then the lips, then the baby. Ible as well as able.

I like to see this kind of initiative.
You’re such a hard worker!

That’s what I’m supposed to say these days. I read it on the Internet.
Never: you’re so smart,
because some day you won’t be smart enough
and you’ll assume mommy was wrong all along and actually you’re dumb.
I should know. This happened to me
in grad school, forced to employ
different-coloured paper clips
to prove my creativity.

Back to you though.
I’d recommend something tangible in-between tooth-brushings—
maybe carpentry or electrical work.
Electrons pulse so very tangibly they’ll burn your baby down.

Cups

Like rabbits

what goes on in the dark of the cupboard above
where the pinhead mealymouthed hooks grasp not so tenderly
the handles—

Like cats too—

I may throw them like abused children at charitable authorities
but here they roll back again from every single goddamn
flea market, thankyou bag, flannelpajama promotional effortium,
sad symposium and unfortunate fundrive.

Covered with—
cartoon birds, disused regional flags,
best dads and overthehill mamas,
disappearing Captain Kirks,
lead leaves,
handpainted periwinkles.
Engorged with coffee crud and battered
tea leaves, with the same prognostication every time:
I will be in my cups
and cannot be rid of them
without loosing my place.

Lockdown

Lockdown

I bad-girl escaped
my building before the lockdown
expecting to return to a world of quieter, humbler people
people too cowed by authority to boldly take
a two-hour lunch just to not crawl under a desk.
I and my friend in the next cubicle, slyly
winking as we shuffled toward the bus-stop,
A cold day in May. Buddhist restaurant. Lingering downtown
over baby soaps and camera batteries, just to make sure.

Of course we are punished for our escapade:
lockdown postponed. Technical difficulties.
Let’s all work out the kinks in our plans
before the gunman arrives: mine is to make peace
with my inner teenager, the one refusing
public safety and a proper coat too.

Introduction / 35: Intimacies

This is my first May Day Project. I missed actual May Day yesterday due to technical difficulties, but here I am, sitting next to the baby in a dark bed with my laptop glowing and just having written the following before turning to sleep before finishing the weekend and going back to the office tomorrow.

I cut and pasted from Word which is apparently why all the extra line breaks, which are not supposed to be there. -- Karen (K.I. Press)

35: Intimacies

As sweet as it comes—

chocolate when the baby sleeps.

Smells of memory.

Hits you at the back of the throat when you think you’ve forgotten.

Some hopeful old creep on the phone wants

to trade your wallet for your panties.

Those were the days—weren’t they?

Wireless, across rooms, across houses, across fathoms,

eons--eons necessitating overrated face creams and

complicated mucus measuring techniques assisting

in the impregnation of she-whales, whose mates' twelve-foot mobile

whale wangs, once the stuff of sea monsters,

are narrated calmly by Sir David Attenborough.

A pungent nip before bed, or a cup of warm milk?

Speaking of, the restless daughter

needs a nip or two herself,

as even whale babies do in their mammalian glory.

Mutually, hormonally, narcotically,

on the street to sleepland,

the scene, a bed of mystery infant dreams and sleep so very well deserved while daddy

relaxes shooting something with his keyboard.