R.I.P.

You froze,

Left me mid-thought, mid-email, mid-morning.

After months of false alarms,
this time I could not rouse you 
from perpetual sleep.

But how can I resent you?

You gave me a good life.

In six years, we went to film school,

shot a TV show and three features.

Moved together through six apartments

in three cities.

Survived a bottle of beer on the keyboard

and a couple of broken hearts.

Your screen saw

draft after draft of screenplays

love letters

hate letters

secret emails

mass mailings

bad poetry

resumes

contracts

requests for money

to fund art and life

erotica

divorce paperwork

and the miracle

of the chance to 

talk with blurred faces

of friends

across miles

and continents.

Sleep well, trusted confidant.
May you dream of
lighter fingers on your keys,
clearer words on your screen,
and a world where
you fly along 
with no case to 
hold you in
the dark.

Forecast

There will be weather tomorrow. It's virtually
guaranteed. Maybe sunny, a little bit rainy, chance
-- oh, chance --
of showers, clouds, snow, hail. Golden chance
of sunshine in the sunshine capital of Canada: grab your bingo
dabber, mark the highs and lows. Shake off
your blues, your rubber boots, your yellow umbrellas. Precipitous
precipitation on the precipice of perspicacity. Weather vanes
will point in the same direction as the wind (there is always
wind, nothing here to slow it down as it passes through town)
and we will talk:
unfairly about the weather,
whether the weather is fair
or not.

The house on 10th Street

I knew the house at knee-level
as openings and closings,
propelled my self across linoleum
toward spaces my arms could span.
The dining table was roof and walls,
was in, under, through.
Sewing machine in spindly-legged cabinet
was a swing-open door, was blue and green
of thread, spool clacking on spool
stacked on wooden pegs.
Bookshelves a crackle of dust jackets
under my splayed hands.
And the kitchen cupboard that held
the turning shelf, the one that moved
each time my hand touched it,
that one was again.

Flight path

we navigate by starlight and faulty instruments
through a night sky obscured by clouds
-- we are meant to sink like skipping stones

but first, we will:

map the constellations in our eyes
trace the topography of our scars
whisper secrets with plaid tongues

every crash landing begins with a peaceful ascent

Lost Causes

I'm a sucker for lost causes.
For boyfriends that can never be,
for candidates that are unelectable,
for family relationships that can never be healed.

I'm a sucker for the underdog,
the hopeless case,
the wounded outmatched welterweight against the ropes,
the guy in the wrong place at the wrong time
the prisoner facing the firing squad,
even if he's guilty as hell.

I'll bet on the long-shot,
Place my chips on zero,
Give money to homeless guys,
even the ones wearing new shoes.

I want the best for everyone,
even those who have done me harm,
even those who will never know
what harm they have done.

===

Sorry I have been so negligent with my posting. May has become what September was in my college days - a month of changes!

in the archives

James Farrar's words home, pasted bound
letters loop, black ink against onionskin, the sky
all clear, this boy has no fear just knows the known
little England, little England in May. is to die for.
the mourning doves, the pearl grey haze above moors,
bluebells really do grow in the woods.
I refuse elegy. I transgress the patent
all war poetry is not despair.
lean into the life pasted, bound into the maroon notebook
kiss what is there. what is there.

Superstore Bhavacakra

Walking the same circles
pushing my penance. Without fail,
the cart with one wonky wheel. Prescribed list
of remedies for our daily ailments.
If there was an aisle for eye of newt
I'd find it. Item by item, I supply
the Aegean stable with straw. Unload
again at the till, reload. Wobble to the van
in pouring rain. Passersby pointing
when items fall. Load the van, drive home.
Carry it in again. Put it away.
Done shopping for another day.

Kind of a mess and sorry to be so AWOL

Mites to mites

Motes to motes

Nanites to nanites

Particular we come into the world, and particular we leave it

Two-celled to caught in a rusty jail

Bits and bytes and everything nice.

A slog of code in a box.

Defunct deficient and diseased.

Wheeling about the earth we eat and repair,

reproduce and slough, shed and absorb.

A slice of code on a slide.

Parts and sums, divisions and multiplications.

A time to be born and a time to die.

A time to grow and a time to grow exponentially

and a time to fill the test tube and suffocate.

Bionic parts learning, yearning to become

cancerous and wise, hungry and deficient,

overfull of questions, a dearth

of computations, fallible instructions,

an incantation, a recipe

from a book of magic spells,

manifest and crawling around dazed creating

havoc.

 

 

 

 

sTicks and sTones

A chorus of punctuation marks the land,

Row upon row of dots, hyphens, parentheses (+ plus signs)

Hold my gaze mile after mile

From the back of this motorcycle -

More sticks |and stones ¨

Than I can count in a week,

This endless sea of dead people –

And me

And him

A minority.

In the fields at the city's edge

An outbreak of virgins cast in stone,

Avӕiled in small, medium, large

Sit atop cement pillars, plastic flowers at their feet

Across the street, the old steel mill endures,

Cremating vehicular accident victims, most of them,

With an antique shop older than me still

Standing on their property.

Soon we will reach water, see

Fishermen on the river banks,

And children loitering hotdog stands;

But not until we've passed the final wasteland, here

Where the graves of the dead unknown

are marked by two-by-fours half cocked in the soil.

            It suddenly goes quiet inside

As he pushes the pedal and

We roar past this piece of land shared,

The one that is theirs.

Morning

Faint cat-scratch, wanting out
or wanting in. A shadow flits
across the wallpaper. Something
just passed the front door.
Someone outside just spoke.

A trickle in the pipes: water running
in the upstairs suite.
Footsteps on the stairs, or
just the house shifting.
A tree branch scrapes
against the siding.

Did you lock the door?
I think so.


It doesn't take much,
one claw on the screen
and there's a hole.

Did you hear something?
Yes.

Distilling Wisdom

Remember “that you belong to nature, and not it to you.” - Grey Owl

Throwing knives in the woods behind Hastings
he dreamed of being a wild Indian. Hooting
like an owl, or pulling chemistry pranks
in grammar school. Crossed the ocean to join
his imagined tribe, crossed a line
to become someone else.

Somewhere between green fields
and green forests, Grey Owl
molted English feathers. Slid
into buckskin, posed
for photographs where he gazed
furrowed into the distance
at an uncertain future.

He asked everyone to remember
their proper place in this world.

Often, he drank
to forget his.

flashback: neighbourly

The woman who eats fire is hoping for rain.
In retirement, she has turned to gardening
and with the weather we've been having,
her gardens are parched. Over scones,
she tells us there never seems to be enough
water and wishes she could offer us something
she had grown, but perhaps if we came back
in a few weeks we could have our pick.
Even the rhubarb needs help. It does well
when watered with urine, and of course, she has
none to offer. Would we mind, she asked,
if we saved ours for the next time we visit?
We told her we would try to remember, but vowed
to forget and never speak with her again.

On Bank Street, fleetingly

A man smoking a pipe passes you on the sidewalk. Trail of smoke catches your nose, and you turn— realizing only then that someone passes so close to you— turn, and look,

but he's at the corner now, the light's green, he's crossing— is that him?— you look as he grows smaller with distance, indistinct, slips into the mass of people moving toward lunchtime cafés

and now you're sure: he wore a grey coat, his scarf was blue

he looked like someone you know.

Between 6 & 8

We prayed for clouds to clear
warned the children not to stare.
Told them about the time it happened
when I was in elementary school.
How we watched it on tv, all the windows
carefully sealed off. Now it seems
it happens all the time: there is
always one eclipse or another
coming up, or a meteor shower, or
a satellite explosion. This evening, we
sat around outside, lit the firepit
casually looking up in time to see
the snake bite the sun.

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.

Impossibility of Flight

"Brute force rather than aerodynamic efficiency is the key to bumblebee flight, Oxford University scientists have discovered." -website "Phys.Org"

On our silent way to the store
fist-sized bumblebees hover
the purpled boulevard clover
wings invisible, bodies aloft:
is it really an anomaly of physics?

Twenty minutes later,
we circle back, laden
with groceries.
Tomorrow we'll walk quietly
this way again. Our individual loads

too heavy to bear,
we remain upright.

Two different games

He's the farmer, chasing me.
I'm the horse, running away,
front porch to back, around
our symmetrical bungalow.
I pantomime a disguise— glasses,
floppy hat. Yeah, I saw the horse. 
He went that way.
The farmer's gullible, I can trick him
twice in a row. The third time
he catches me.

I'm a man with a new TV.
He's a thief, snatches the set
from my living room.
I chase him, back porch to front.
Twice my eyes deceive me:
Guy with a TV? he says.
Over there —he points,
and I tear around the corner
of the house. But the third time
I catch him.

Uncomfortable Shoes

 

The stores on Queen St. West are mostly different;

the giant CTV looms now,

though the headshop and The Silver Snail remain

the same--no doubt forever.

 

I bought beautiful red shoes

and wore them out the door,

learning how to walk in heels

again--there was one pair,

platform wedges, in university, silver

reflecting streetlights on Robson Street, the other

in grade six I used to wear to band concerts,

Christmas and June--

and strolled right to Spadina,

wincing with wonderment at

the little things--

people-watching for each of their

little indignities,

the heels wobbling higher than mine,

the sidewalk spit from the sidewalk artist's perspective,

the buskers and panhandlers versus

my expensive shoes.

 

At Spadina the building has changed completely;

I cannot remember which door it was.

The door used to be white. There used to be

a Roots store. And the Stem diner is gone.

The cafe across the street

where I bought pizza and lattes

is burgers now.

Long gone of course is the massage parlour.

It didn't take long to get busted--

they took out a classified ad--

and we'd been a bit worried by all the

yelling of the new tenants in languages

we didn't understand. I came to work

one day and the cops had already

come and gone efficiently,

but did not leave instructions

on what to do with the spattering of

johns who, their knocks unanswered,

wandering up the stairs and poked their heads

in, looking at us, asking, "Is this the massage parlour?"

 

University had not prepared us

on what to say except "no," with a mingling

of scorn and disgust and fear.

They were booking 2 weeks ahead, I think,

it stopped eventually, and I continued

bashing my head in, trying

to become an alcoholic, dreading mornings,

reading The Bell Jar, wishing I were dead,

having panic attacks on public transit or while

walking home further and further west, until arriving

unemployed in Winnipeg, but without

wondering who was standing behind me.

 

 

aftr th fall 9

if heaven had a season, it would always be May
      - Ella J Speckeen, my 15 year old daughter


daughter you hold my hand while we cross the road,
look left then right double-check, we step out
your grip on me tight,
as I held you so damned tight
when you almost slipped from this earth
fourteen hours after your anguished birth,
and the surgeon readied his scalpel,
silver life-giving knife
ready to bless your new-born skin.

it is you who watches over me
sweet little mother bird
I am fragile just for now,
my brain feather-dusted,
dropped, shaken, it tickles
as it regains and loses
words
thoughts
tears
is brave and grouchy and slow

love o love
your hand in mine makes a nest,
as you guide me safely across a street,
careful, carefully I am blessed,
my daughter, my one,
blessed as you guide me
gently home.

What the scale knows

Every year it gets harder

to lose weight.

Where once her body let pounds fall 

like leaves from a tree, 

like burdensome bundles 

from tired arms on arriving home,

now her skin clings to each oily cell, 

anxious, defensive, traumatized 

from the endless barrage of changes

that have made up this life.

Having just barely survived one too many fights 

where she was outweighted,

the body refuses to be at disadvantage again.

As if holding this weight

is the only way to preserve who she is, 

keep some part of her intact,

create a region of stability, 

begin her secret campaign to ensure 

nothing else will ever be lost again.

letting Go

Grief, unforgiving

begets grief; unrelenting

the spirit screams for a surge

of tears, that truest of tempests;

relieve, release,

This is not how it was meant to be

This is not how it was meant to be

let go. I don't want to let go!

Basic Instinct

The neighbour's first impulse was to bag and bury
the fresh corpse, his wife
talked him out of it, she said in a hushed
whisper. "We've been waiting all day
for you to notice."

My son's first impulse when he noticed
our pet cat lying on the lawn
was to hide it from his father
(who had just dropped by to pick up
a birthday girl.)

The birthday girl's first impulse when she heard the news
was to cancel the visit, but
not explain why.

The driver's first impulse, after the brakes
didn't prevent the sick and sudden thump below,
was to speed away into the night, anonymously.

The cat's first impulse when it was struck by a car
was to come as close to home as she could.

Her shadow slinking away sideways with the sunrise,
hiding rigor mortis truth from sun's first rays

as ineffectively as dawn hides from day.

flashback: it’s good to keep busy

They are known as the quints--a set of triplets and conjoined twins. In the summer they breed peas--unusual coloured pods and flowers are their speciality. They have created a strain with pink flowers, red pods, and purple peas. Apparently, they are a little mealy, but no one seems to care. Every fall, cash-stuffed envelopes in currencies they'd never have the privilege to spend arrive from collectors begging for just five or a dozen precious seeds. They keep the money, but every year they send out just one package to the outside.

In the winter, they custom embroider wedding dresses and christening gowns for fancy families in the cities. They work communally on the wedding dresses, all five huddled together, heads bowed as if in prayer, humming a melody they are certain their mother sang while pregnant before the twins were born and sliced their mama dead. When they mail off their gowns and dresses, they request photos of their work worn on those holy occasions, but only handful have ever bothered. This troubles one of the triplets, the others shrug if off. But what can they do? Just work, just work.

Feathers of Toronto

 

Toronto is a hotbed of waterfowl,

no joke; and shorebirds too, and birds

that just like the shore--

lunch gulls, hanging around patios

too large and club-like, scaring away

the softer cooing pavement birds of no brain.

The long-necked designer cormorants

striking poses in the late afternoon,

sun setting flatteringly behind them.

Long-tailed ducks no longer called

old squaws, keeping to themselves

far off in the water. Mergansers

flipping their hoods back confident

in the uniqueness of their bling.

Streetcars and cowbirds screech.

Stealth blackbirds rush you

for you are in their territory now.

I was from Alberta, once, and did not know

what a spit was. A spit jutting the city out

and keeping it still at bay,

a station where we stop a moment

to pick up quintessential inessentials,

feathers and hats, cashmere tufts to line

our nests against the concrete.

 

Learning How to Fly

She wanted to train the fish to fly,

To abide, form a line.

                   In her mind

They would fly from side to side

Of the pond's perimeter

Behind Barclay's stable, where long

Before she was born, the lake had been

Damned for a daughter unknown.

Hours she spent every day

Cajoling them with stolen bread

From the maid, while wheedling

Her fish with sweet wishes;

And little by little they came to her trusting,

Ate from her fingers

On the man-made shores

Of the pond built for love long ago.

Three days it took for

A line to be formed.

            On the fourth

She fed them barely,

Rationing bread, her provisions paced carefully

And waited to see what her fishes might do.

But it wasn't until she left that day

That they understood the manner of things.

And so, on the fifth,

They flew to and fro for the pieces

They claimed as their own.

It came to be that upon her daily return

The fish flew above the pond for the girl,

For her food and her love;

For true she would be to the creatures, you see,

That once tamed would require her own conformity.




now in possession of (another!) new computer and worked thru the formalities of new technology!... i hope to be visiting more often now;-)

Portent

Fresh lilacs at our wedding,
they'd been planted by my grandmother.
As though invoking the dead might
resuscitate what was already dying
in us, taken by cancer. Who would believe
what we saw, the next weekend:
two scorpions on our backyard picnic table.
I scraped them into a jar.
You suggested they'd been left by a guest.
I prayed to a God of signs and wonders,
watched the tails poise and swing
through the water-specked glass.

Streetcar Madeleine

A whole time of my life


collides head first with the streetcar,

splats on the windshield

gooey and green.

This car, the driver says,

has been short-turned at Roncesvalles.

The reanimation of many small angers

that the first car I should get on

on this trip to Toronto

should short-turn me.

 

--

I've been AWOL a few days while writing a conference paper. But I'm at the conference now, so expect a few more Toronto Moments in the coming days.

 

aftr th fall 8

i said, "my garden is lovely in winter"
though I meant to say "spring"
winter just butted in

and all the other season words,
parachutes packed
in a row ready to jump

just got the hell out of the way.

Shy

First Hallowe'en, age five. My mother and aunt
conferred: would I even say Trick or Treat?
So I went, escorted, around town,
cardboard sign hung round my neck.
*

Grade four: girls in the washroom,
always the same three, filled the cramped passage
between doorway and stalls
with their hair-brushing and gossip.
A few mumbled words required to get past:
'scuse me. c'n I get through.
That, or the deft use of elbows.
Entering unnoticed is out of the question.
*

In grade nine these things are impossible:
Saying actually my name's not Joan,
making eye contact,
calling out Fresher! in a game of Prisoner's Base,
calling people by name,
saying yeah, so? you're ugly too.

It's the young mother we'll remember

before silver stole her youth,
sewed a seam around her face,
time and worry puckering her skin
skillfully as the broadcloth darts
and pleats once formed under sparrowing
hands. She, she does not grow
old, as we that are left grow old: age shall not weary her,
nor the years condemn, at the coming up of the sun, in the twilight, at the fraying
of a hem. At night, surprised
by sunpocked moon,or in winter, yearning
for grass-threaded ground, it is her we seek
in the space between inhale/exhale, between blinks,
between silence/sound. This stone, instead, holds her place
suspended timeless between these dates.

Oak Hammock Marsh

On the way home, we squashed stowaway
mosquitoes against the windows & picked
burrs from our socks, dropping them onto the mats
& if there were any horseflies beating
against the windshield
where it narrowed
to the thinnest
slice
of sky, we ignored them.

And there were gutted things on the highway
& I was glaring at the roof of the car
when I saw the tick
on your neck
& when you lowered the window
& tossed it out, its legs
skittered against the dry ridges
of skin on your thumb.

As we watched, the sky grew:
we could see all the things that floated in it
& the effort
it took
to remain aloft,
dragonflying & dying across the glass.

A view streaked with wings.

piece of thesis

what I'm mostly working on...until I give up and come here

Boyhood on the coast, Vorsa was always close to his mother. Sickly as a child. She was forever bringing him to the urtekvinne for a cure. In the dark he can still conjure up the smell of the medicine hut, dank summer rotting from the roof in slips and cuttings. The fevered dreams and visions that visited him in the deep night brought on by poultice and tea. Something for his stone-jawed mother to grieve besides his father’s constant leavings. When he was well enough, stories and songs, each word a star in the night sky, mapping a constellation lightpoint by lightpoint.

Trolls were true.
Witches had names.
Every tree was Yggdrasil.

Trolls var sant
Hekser hadde navn
Hvert tre var Yggdrasil.

Horse of the Hanged

each nail hammered in as a hoofbeat
heard from the cell, your final mount being readied
you will take one last ride
and it is you will do
the bucking

black hood slipped over your eyes
-- did he really say this is for Thomas?
your feet slip out of the stirrups
and the lariat loop finds purchase
spurless heels digging into nothing but
air

this stallion has no mercy

flashback: our guilt stays with us

The man with the beard of bees is dying.
Supine on his bed, a blue gingham sheet
with coffee rings that confess
its previous life as a tablecloth,
rests below his sternum.

Shirtless, his chest tattoo stares out:
an eye in a palm in a beehive,
on the back of an elephant
circled in indecipherable script,
with rays of words like a child's sun.

His hand outstretched he speaks,
but with the buzzing we can't hear. One of us
grabs his palm and he shifts to his side,
the bees move as a group and the beard
now rests on his shoulder.

A squeezed hand and he whispers again.
His body is shiny and pale, a misshapen candle.
He tells us he needs to find a home for his beard,
his bees need a host. Will we care for them?
We shake our heads. No, we will not.

Cyborg Manifesto Erasure

Iron intimacy, monster mate, organic apocalypse.
Quintessentially, they are everywhere.
The chip. The 1950s. The news. Advertised sunshine:
light and clean, eminently mobile pain.
The potent Alice.
Market. Disassembled and reassembled code.
Predatory reproduction.
 Dream of the embodiment of taboo fusion.
The tools are stories. Pollution.
These are the couplings which subvert forced mirrors,
the fall into writing in the bosom of abstraction.
Take irony for granted. Take pleasure.

How to Treat Boils

“Tip #1: Apply a slice of a raw potato to the affected area. Raw cabbage leaf is also very good for reducing inflammation and promoting healing.” – How to Treat Boils, wikiHow.

1.
Good-time god of fields, groves, and wooded glens, Pan was half-man, half-goat. He’d eat anything. Grumpy goddess of parking lots, golf courses, and managed green spaces, I’m half-woman, half-gout. Leery teetotaler, I gulp water like wine and gnaw seeping handfuls of woody berries.


2.
Sperm swarm an enormous, indifferent egg.

A full club. Badly-lit bodies besiege the bar, bills bristling from outstretched hands.

Buckshot launches at a doe’s rumpy hindquarters, her head buried in the brush, her mouth working.


3. 
The body shows the work of viruses and bacteria as if it was a canvas, was an entire gallery full of canvases:

Boils, cat-scratch disease, impetigo, mumps, prickly heat rash, rosacea, scarlet fever, swimmer’s itch, thrush.

Ugh. These are our grandmothers’ infections. Where are the post-modern papules, the faddish fevers? I mean the ones that rash you up but let you go, of course. Nothing lethal.

Skin is a thin shield.


4.
When treating mumps, custom decrees wrapping the face, jaw and jowls with linseed poultices.

If cloth bandages are unavailable, strips torn from your petticoats or the drapes (or even petticoats made from drapes) make for acceptable substitutes.

(Likewise, hot toddies and rum punches can be spontaneously swapped for freshly squeezed milk and thin broth.)

Tie the poultices firmly. Your knots should resemble meaty chestnuts roasting on a hearth. They should be a comfort to the afflicted patient. (Jaunty knots are for self-obsessed Frenchmen.)


5.
When I am so run down that it feels as though my eyes might bleed, I get canker sores the size of overwintering ladybugs on my gums.

When I arrive home after a trip, I usually wind up in a doctor’s office, showing her a weepy rash. Look what I found in my armpit!

My favourite thing, mid-infection? To make people palpitate the tender lymph nodes under my chin. Ow. OW! (See?)

Vectors include white-footed field mice, deer, raccoons, opossums, skunks, weasels, foxes, shrews, moles, chipmunks, squirrels and horses.

I once had a pebbly rash that almost completely covered my back and stomach and breasts but once I slipped on a t-shirt you couldn’t tell.

I get hives from budgies, cats, chinchillas, dogs, ferrets, gerbils, hamsters, mice and rats. Anything furry. I once went to a Christian horsemanship camp and spent my week in the saddle with a runny nose.

Over the course of the infection, I manfully gargle hot salt water and touch the sore with my tongue tens of thousands of times a day.

I deeply appreciated the doctor’s shocked inspiration when I carefully took off my shirt.

Fly away fly away fly away home.

Evensong

Good shepherd and sheep glowing red,
jewel colors in the east windows muddied
by glow from revolving lights.
Low voices, a shuffle behind the back pews,
blue uniforms bend over a woman on the floor.
The small crowd of watchers defers, giving room
to the skilled, but poised to fetch water,
clasp a hand, whatever's asked,
faces speaking their helpless concern.
Attendants murmur: can you hear me?
can you speak? Along the nave
the bent heads in rows, the call
and response: Hear us. Deliver us.

Terminal.

Headaches, or a spiralling dizziness. There
will have been an MRI, the diagnosis is so
certain. The specialists have thrown
darts at calendars, given you
a range to work
with.

There is light at the end of the tunnel.
It's a train.

You could bring up sex, politics,
religion. It's the rare person who will meet
your eyes. Some friends disappear altogether,
"to give you privacy at this time." Grave consideration.

There is light at the end,
there is an end.

The sky is the bluest it's been for a week.
How do you prioritize now? Time is no longer
money, if it ever was.
Time is time.

There is light.

after th fall 7

Pero yo digo:

sólo por breve tiempo,

sólo como la flor del elote,

así hemos venido a abrirnos

sobre la tierra.

Miguel León-Portilla

Fleetingly, we, like strands of corn silk, meet, come together, only for a moment—brief, our season—like strands of corn silk on ripening heads of corn in a mountainside field, red earth, red waterfall the strands of silk.

We are the waterfall, la cascada, a billion raindrops made one, if only we can hear this field, the red earth, the sound of feet, the sound of a hand sowing a kernel of corn—each kernel a daydream, an imagination of tall stalks, a season, a tending, a ripening, a reaping, the ritual of corn, the feast.

If only we can see this field, feel this red earth, our eyes open not only to the greatness of mountain, but to the greatness of the single, the tiny—a raindrop clinging to the leaf, a quietude, a star, perfect form within, a star, perfect form within us each.

News

I am quite excited to have just launched a chapbook called Crossings that includes several poems that appeared on May Day in earlier versions: "Saskatoons" from 2009, and "Departure," "Two days and a night," "Ontario," "The Island," and "Repetition" from 2010.

after the fall 6

clara si, clara
clarity

a mountain
a path

a step, one step
I step

up up up
slow

slow, the mountain
stride step

a stick, a broken hand
a rhythm click

a mountain
path

duff, scruff
y soy soy soy

alive from sleep
weeks lost

alive a step
a stride a click

a white
a granite

summit
clara clarity

alive
amigos, ami

alive.

Daylight Nocturne

Curled cat in a soft-bristled porcupine ball.
Grey-splashed noon. Rubinstein on repeat.
Black branches frame porridge-bland skyline
like a negative of midnight.
Last night, the super-moon was obscured by clouds.
Today, an ordinary sun makes the same wan complaint.
Vague as a rolling Chopin bassline in murmuring sixes.
Even sforzando dusk is robbed of glory. Can only deepen
what was foreshadowed sostenuto at noon.
Whisks clatter in the kitchen. As if
there is a recipe to stop the rain.
To un-do the day that has too much fade
to fade away.

we won't visit again

We've lost a few over the years. One lost her hands
fixing a bomb and drowned herself. Two died in battle.
One crushed under a train as we hopped cars,
another shot during a break-in.

But Lois,
Lois was the only one who left on purpose,
who chose domesticity, an urban life, adulthood,
lured by the clatter of keys.

We were marching near Omaha and felt compelled to look her up.
One of us remembered her married name and tracked her down.
The new girl and a few others went shopping for knives, but most
of us crammed into her little kitchen. Sunshine yellow and tomato red.
She baked cookies while we visited and let us cram our bags full when we left.

Lois wore lipstick, but her hair was a mess. She wore a gingham apron
with little embroidered flowers on the corners. Her arms were too skinny
but the rest of her had bloomed into the body of a mother and deflated dough.

No one wanted to hold the baby.

She said she was happy, that she loved her life, her boys, her husband.
She cried when we said good-bye, and when she hugged,
her nails dug in like fishing hooks.