May 7 - Alphabet Game

The Alphabet Game
Modified for Funerial Purposes

My husband and I kill time
on road trips
playing the alphabet game
fish letters off billboards
in strict order
hoarde them in poker-faced silence
curse the absense of Js and Qs
triumph when PiZZa Hut
crowns our glory

I drive alone today
to honour an uncle
killed by time
on his last road trip
I'll have to play alone
silently tally the inevitable family alphabet
as it marches forward
in strict order

A is for alcohol and amnesia to numb the pain
B is black suits black skirts black sheep brought out of closets
C is for cutlery, plastic to avoid bloodbaths from
Drama and Egos proudly on display
Forgetting it's not All About You
Grandchildren running around oblivious while we
Hold in and hold on to grudges and one another begrudingly
I hope I can stand it
Just for a few days
Killing fear and old resentments
Loving everyone the same
Menstrual cycle ol' reliable, bringing her own pain
Naproxen my angel my saviour my true blue friend
Oxygen sought away from crowds
Parents here and not
Questions unasked unanswered buried
Restraint shown and not
Strangers sharing grief and disparate memories
Time the old trickster, turning babies into high school grads
Uncle my uncle
Violently ripped from us
Wishes and what-ifs and why-didn'ts
Xamined in the privacy of the bathoom
Y Y Y
Zzzz on the couch, make it all a dream

The seventh day of May

It is a day
when the girl in the heavy black
leather coat and tight
panty hose
waiting to be picked up
by one of the minivans circling
the parking lot
of this family restaurant chews
and picks her cuticles
bloody
squints against the sun
and suddenly
pirouettes

It is a day
when the goose in heavy black
markings and tight
ankle bands
waiting to be picked up
by one of the ragged vees passing
above the parking lot
of this family restaurant pecks
and sips at cigarettes in a sandy
puddle
honks against the sky
and suddenly
flies

Ugly.

Mandy says
she hates it when people
use the word ugly. No one
is ugly.

She is more beautiful
than me.

& i've only ever seen a possum once

(out on the end of a flashlight beam,
as the tree was limned in night)

she says she wishes
we'd made it to
our fourth

i tell her as if
the preceding half year had left no marks
"i thought we did"

my apologies for my passive
"in place of"
passion
but
not for
my patience
nor perimetric proximiscuity

i may play
possum
or even
possum playing roadkill
but i'm completely inept
at giving up completely
because i LOVE
playing in traffic your eyes
deeper than halogen
and your grille
an open invitation
to attempting hot passionate
fusion with your radiator

don't get me started on your bumper
(i look too good
in chrome agony)

there i go
objectifying you again
by just lying there on the road
to keep the asphalt from telling its side

can i be your hood ornament?

The sixth day of May

The smell of rubber as it breaks
down instead of sweat
the sound of chairs
colliding splayed wheels
making tight and tighter circles
as the boy pitches
forward then stands up still
strapped to his chair
his axle is too short someone
shouts
from the sidelines
after another finger-tip
foul-collision
and his wheel
radials on the gym floor
as he plays
with men with joints
missing with too much
too little gray hair
who mutter about the shot
clock eye the ref
even while they extend
their muscled
arms
wheel for the hole the boy
can’t yet
feel

titular indeterminayacy, approximately as published aurally at speaking crow, may 3/05

the first time i got married
was the year big brother
was too busy blushing to be watching,
never mind
catching bouquets
on tape

i remarried the year
my favourite movie turned 33
but i won't be asking
any daisies anytime soon
to give me your a n s w e r d o
or pod bay doors to open
or we'd be here forever
watching the paint dry on monoliths
already primed for square-dancing
[1-2-3 1-2-3]
around black holes in the theory of destinations
& jupiter
would begin having sequels
a lot less jovian
& much more like
a prodigal sun
stealing the fire from the centre
of our daylight savings time

but even hal hath no fury
like a date that goes uncircled
by the dawn of man
hearing ligeti at daybreak

thus began my
mennolytic period

i'd plead the fifth of the fifth
but all i'd get
would be festivities
cinco de mayo

the mayans had calendars
by my-oh-my if "maya"
isn't just a foundation
for illusion to build pyramids to
(even the stars are blood-spattered)

this is my illusion:
happy fourth, i say
anniversarially
to the fifth of the fifth

her narrative
a year ago today
took a tortuous path then introduced it
to the very notion
of anniversifications
because the narratives are restless
as bodies disenfranchised
by machetes & heads used
as soccerballs became her
new level of playingminefields...

but
back to my maya
my mayday
the beast with two backlashes:
even my maieutics
are having a midwife crisis

& menno? please!
blistered are the pleasemakers'
lips
no more pleading
the fifth of the fifth
as cinco de mayo celebrates
only liberation

where does this menno in me
come from?
s t r e n g t h
menno magin mayin magna.
from the magnifique to the
- mainly - fecal
my how the faces of the mighty are
- proudly - fallen
|p| -- |f|
can i stomach the very vocabulary
of strength i abs
tract?
magin or mayin?
g soft, mayanor

i'm into
mayanihilation now
maintenant, je suis
montagne-uish-fulfilling...

i wanted to know more about this
hindubuddhist notion of illusions
so i ground up the wedding band
that a friend had
carved out of antler
&
snorted it
& i asked the mystical being that appeared before me
if he was a genuine lama.
casually turning his head
not to cough but to scratch at
his hump outlined
by the andes, he snorted
that's "yama", señor!
wow
i said waking up with
a severe case of enlightenment.
even my hills of illucination are alive
with anagrams of maya

& i'm sure now,
that if i'd have looked more closely
into the emptiness of that fortune cookie i had
on that fateful or fateless wedding day
i would have seen beyond
that freudian
or jungian
or yinyangian
lack of slip.
under magnification i would have noted:
my dead god!
it's full of stars!

i'm still seeing stars
& they wish me
happy universary

but i still navigate by fixing
my sights on my maya.
bonne fête, zha-nin
you're still the genesis of so much
janineality

even zeus feels juiced

Day 6 - Gymnastics

Gymnastics

She bends back
over her legs over me
her hair tickles my ankles
reminds me of my best friend in 3rd grade
those double-jointed stunts
pushing her fingers backwards into the table
or against her own wrist

I utter a quiet wow
with the same awe
the same wish
that I could be as flexible
the same fear
that something will break

Poetry on the Road

Myra asked me to let you know that she will be on the road for a few days but will write poems each day and post them on her return. I may need to do the same on Sunday/Monday, but we'll see if I can find an internet connection.

in the mirror

in the mirror
there is a face
looking outward
there is a face
looking inward
in the mirror
there is a face
looking
in the mirror
in the mirror
there is a face
looking
looking
inward
outward
looking
in the face
in the mirror
there is a face
there is a mirror
the rope
moving through your hands
knotting

One Japanese

We need another Sugihara
another writer of exit visas,
crested paper handed down
to Jewish hands silent as undug graves,
as the last train left Lithuania,
some one to spare us please
the self-righteous murder of what is right,
pronounced by sneering leaders
who know less and less about
what right ever was.
We need another Sugihara
ambassador of humanity,
patriot of sitting quietly
with your someday grandchildren
because you are still breathing thanks
when the hot red sun of sunset
is not a death sentence,
not the end of everything known,
the mushroom has not exploded
and honor exceeds office.

5-5-5

Cinqo de My-Oh

There was a time
when discipline was enforced
when the young were encouraged
to be perfect
when races had prizes
and losers were shot
when this planet looked like it
had a hope in hell of surviving
before humans
put up a row of booths
in a show of raw foolish hope
but no one has any change
left to pay our final toll

you look at me
as if I were
up on a soap box
in Hyde Park
your eyes lack recognition
that a battle is beginning
you don't even know there are sides
to choose from

don't worry --
if you don't choose
you'll soon be chosen

The fifth day of May

There is the breath you take in over
a hand-made cigarette on the bench
in front of our building
the breath that made your lip
pull
over the gap the teeth you lost
and found kneeling in the stairwell the moan
you let go as you used the mop to prop you up

upper right central upper right lateral

upper left central upper left lateral

one of the times
you fell down the stairs

There is the breeze that carries
your gossip and smoke into the downwind
sulk of the girl on the next bench in her hoodie
and knee socks on this grit-stark spring day
where the sun through the bedroom window
the illustrated-bible
blaze
gold-leafing the morning
seemed to suggest there would be more to the day
than the push of paper and park bench lunch-hours

Yellow Curry Chicken Spicy Black Bean Soup

Chicken Tikka Masala Roasted Vegetable Lasagna

timed by the swerving cars only a few feet away
none of them none of us
ever sure where to turn

There is the mugging you took over
a six of beer two blocks from here the fading bruises
like old newspaper made news again when uncovered
by spring and the mugging when you come to get the garbage
take-out coffee cups that contain tongues
reaching for the last sip curved rinds that hold
an open mouth bite the
snap
as you flick the bag open
for the remains of this day

Suite 007 Suite 300

Suite 404 Suite 121

but what remains
after you’ve gone is how you stuck out your tongue
through the gap in your teeth
before you leaned on the corner of my desk
for a good jaw

The Poets

It seems as if the poets
will never shut up. Now
they have begun to scream
off their balconies.

They all seem to have balconies.
It used to be you could pass them
on the street and never know.
Those days are gone now.

These days, it seems as if
nothing we do is boring. Everything
resonates with layers of meaning.

We are sick of meaning. We want
to watch our reality shows and eat
our potatoes in peace.

Damn these poets. For all of their talk,
they do not understand. There was a time

when we looked up to them, when we sang
their songs, read their words, loved them

and built statues to honour their passing.

Those days are gone now.

Now,

we praise

silence.

Planting time

When the day adds minutes
to each end of itself
like a generous calling plan promising
more time to talk to the silent plants
more time to place the mute roots of
summer feasts within the reach of
dirt gloved hands

When the delicious decay
that is the warming soil
beckons in it’s full
pubic way—

Plant me
Plant me

How can the spring drunk hand
not touch,
not push
the roaming root to it’s new
warm place?

Guide the root to reach
for the juice that will spread and rise
through the already up reaching
already eager signal
green text message flashing in each
flowing vein.

Firm in it’s wet place
straight stem sends curls
from the mound of black garden
heaving in the new moon.
Unlimited calling to life
howling in carbon dioxide—
smoking in the relief of being
past the evolutionary tension of

Will I be heard?
Will I be planted?
Will I go on?

Day 4 - Fever

Fever

I lie in bed
let the fever take me where it may
interpret the paisley pattern on the sheets
the way the lumps in the duvet
forms faces that change
as I smush them about

On the ceiling the cracks
tell stories
that fall into my dreams
singular actually one dream
stuck on repeat
I'm drawing on the chalkboard
I don't know the answer
the teacher is waiting
no one is allowed to help
no one is here to save me
I don't even remember the question

The fourth day of May

Fishing from the plush decks of the Miss Piggy II
Gudmund the roofing contractor had felt the hi-yah thud of five
spring salmon between his feet watched the constriction
of pink flesh had become used to the gasping mouths
the breathless wide-eyed protest over the din of the radio

Oh here she comes

Watch out boy she’ll chew you up

Oh here she comes

She’s a maneater*

and even though he was better with a nailgun than a rod
and reel he soon learned to croon to call them beauties
before he conked them against the side of the Piggy
and stacked them like bluebeard cordwood
in his cooler

Fishing for the tail-end of a beautiful fall afternoon
Gudmund had his trusty rod in one hand and his sweating
beer in the other was thinking butter dill the crackle of the fry pan
when he got another bite and felt the arc of protest in his rod
against the heavy thing that lurked below

I thought I had a salmon

Then I thought I had a halibut

Then I didn’t know what I had**

he’d heard the stories of fishy women wrapped in netting
as neatly as women in sheets and even though he was twenty klicks
southwest of Carmanah Point on Vancouver Island
and not in some tropical outport where women combed
and curled waiting for sailors he slowly reeled her in
his beer spilled his eyes on every ripple
and curve of surf eager for an eyeful of her

Fishing for compliments for just the right line
Gudmund reeled and reached for her with the pursed mouth
of his net and his own wide smile of welcome
Call me Gudy he’d say but when the Humboldt squid
surfaced next to the flanks of the Piggy her eight pink limbs
outstretched lisping

you fit into me

like a hook into an eye

a fish hook

an open eye***

Gudy panicked; he’d be the first to admit that she was dainty
only four-foot-four but despite her corkscrewing suckers
each with its own row of pearly teeth her three hearts of gold
and her big eyes he’d thought it through
he wasn’t ready for this kind of commitment, see?
and there’s always other fish in the sea

Fishing from the plush decks of the Miss Piggy II
Gudmund the roofing contractor was about to throw her back
even though the cruellest blow of all is the catch and release
when he saw his hook in her left eye and, callous man,
made a quip about calamari

What the hell?

I didn’t know it was a Humboldt squid

A man-eater**

And maybe it was because he was better with a nailgun
than a rod better with power tools than power politics
that he got a faceful of ink enough to fill any poet's poison pen
but he didn’t need anyone to tell him that he should fling
his doomed darling to the deck open the hatch
and kick her breathless wide-eyed
into the hold

_____________________________

* Maneater, H20, Hall and Oates (1982, RCA Records)

** Scientists watch for calamari that bites back, Globe and Mail, Tom Hawthorn (May 2, 2005).

*** You fit into me, Power Politics, Margaret Atwood (1971, House of Anansi Press)

2 poems 2day - both about squid

I wrote two poems today, and was tempted to save one until tomorrow, but that seems shady somehow. Best to abide by the honour system of writing every day. So here you go, two poems.

Thanks to Brenda Schmidt, for providing the inspiration.


The Humboldt Squid

It has three hearts, not enough
to prevent it from cannibalizing its brother
when he is weak, hooked,
at the end of a line.

Or perhaps, you must view the world
in other light.

It is better to be eaten alive
by your brother
than killed and devoured
by strange monsters.


The Animals are Moving

The animals are moving. Take the Humboldt Squid.
Dosidicus gigas. El Diablo Rojo. The Red Devil.
Man-eater. Cannibal. Many names. Without boundaries.

It frightens us. Without boundaries. We would all like to.
Feel that. But it frightens us. To think.

To have many names.

The Humboldt Squid, native to warm waters, the Pacific Ocean.
Along the coast of South America, as far north as California. Now,
Vancouver Island. The animals are moving. They are shifting,

blurred,

not just squids, but fish, snakes, birds, badgers. Others.
Even the trees, I have heard.

But why care? We have never cared.

Only. We wonder. What are the reasons?
Is it whim, some seeking greener pastures, others following
their food? Is it sickness? A wish to die in peace, alone? Perhaps
nothing unusual, something we have only now noticed.

Or is it something else? We break them apart,
dissect them, study

the smallest pieces.

Is there something larger, something
we are missing?

Perhaps,

we should be moving
as well.

The third day in May

At ten o'clock in Assiniboine Park we notice that the floodlights
in the Leo Mol Sculpture Garden are choked with fall leaves
the same way we noticed that the rivers are choked with leaning
uprooted trees when we happened to drive over one of the bridges
and saw the pile-up the surge of water before driving back
into a day unaffected by spring break-up the rising water levels
making Leo’s woodland animals set here and there
along the garden path suckle and lick each other in stripes of light
that do not do them justice but at least the chill of late spring
is nothing to them even though Leo took the time fifty years ago
to texture the long slopes of back the turned dining room table legs
the sculptures cast just as his girls were cast their breasts bunched
the way the rabbit sitting in the leaf litter a few feet from the path
in the darkest part of this dim bright park has bunched
its hindquarterswaiting to see if we’ll move its way
if we represent a threat and the bunny has been bronzed
by its caution but the girls are free to recline on their marble
pedestals in their pigtails and perky tits: an old man’s fantasy
as much as the busts of men in power only their heads and shoulders
only their heads and shoulders are an old man’s fantasy
and we walkers could touch the old men the girls in ways they never
would have permitted in life there would be no startle no bound
for cover but we stay to the path as the light plays over the wrinkles
of the busts of men and and the hardened nipples of girls

At one end of the garden a massive metal Zeus stands over a pool
and the rippling effects of a mallard its ugly call echoed by the snorts
of laughter of the girl and the boy that chases her reaching
for her cold hand all along the paths as we hunch over the heat
in our vitals creating cleavage under the sweaters and coats
we’d already put away for the season and pulled out again
the material scratchy and strange after only a single week
in storage and her laughter echoes through the rustling
budding branches warning us away the way the mallard
warns away other ducks his feet churning underwater
so we walk the loops and turns of the path in the opposite
direction the floodlights making spots and voids in our fields
of vision some day-time gardener burning daylight
as he schemed up the best way to lead us down
the garden path at night the shapes exaggerated
by darkness the same way snow and sculptors exaggerate
making monuments of men and the hardened nipples of girls
and there are a pair of men over by the Inuit sculpture
at the entrance both balding both in black who smoke
and speak in low tones from either side of the path
overshadowed by trees and the long limbs
of Leo’s imagination but we know they will come no further
the same way we know the people in the idling van
in the parking lot pumping exhaust into the air as the trees
pump oxygen will come no further

And as we leave our headlights steady on the signs
directing us out of Assiniboine Park there is a gush of light
in the trees that moves and shifts as we pass and we see
the teenagers pacing and smoking like everyone else pacing
in and out of the light and feeding the fire that overwhelms
a daytime BBQ pit the concrete box burning bright the fire
blown back and forth by the wind and the boys keep their eyes
at their feet having burnt everything dry already burn boxes
and plastic from the metal garbages making less of more
making less of more is a young man’s fantasy
and hopefully this will go no further: they will do no more damage
than is necessary, they will watch the fire they have built
until it goes out or they are chased away having made
wood smoke tangible in their hair and smoke the same way
the brigades of late-shift streetsweepers just past the park’s gate
have made winter’s accumulated grit tangible have made sandstorms
against our headlights the curbside girt sent aloft by the bristles
of their machines over the sidewalks and boulevards of the city
but at the tail end of the parade a man stands on the axle
of his machine bouncing hopefully so as not to lose his
place in line and waste another night

Away With Leave

In a shoebox studio
down in the Tenderloin district
a handful of bewildered travelers
parked our young asses, while
the war hollered at the door.

Strolling down Leavenworth Avenue
on the way back from working
the smoky confines of a pot-fogged
movie house running
A Space Odyssey in an endless
loop, we could get some
mystery
meat stew down
at the mission
if we didn’t mind the adventure.

That was nothing
next to the night when the MPs
came round looking
for the Nam tanned AWOL lover
I was feeding at the time,
and the Apache Queen took a beating—
smacked right into the surrender white tub—

Left with blue fields up
the side of his head
and stars
striping his stubborn pretty face.

I didn’t tell ‘em shit,
he repeated as he spat wet red
to flush away disgust at what
the country had become.

It took all the skill and cover-up we had
to make him up
so he could work
the stock room at JC Penney,
where he got all the new guys
civvies with his employee discount.
We could sell jungle green jackets
down in Union Square or where
the trolleys turned at the wharf.

Camouflage was all in the eye.
No beholding. Fighting
was selective in those days.
Poor boys with three Purple Hearts
knew when to leave
well enough alone.

Passing through the desert
where his mama lived, we stopped
a couple years down our own road
to tell her how brave her boy was—
what a friend,
what a man,
what a leader in courage.
We left out the part
about him being a queen,
the reason he was on the coast—
and she honored us
with cold drink and honest food.

Day 3 - What I'll remember

What I'll remember

Those stairs down to the basement
where you let me sleep
when I needed a place
where someone loved me enough
not to ask too many questions

Those walls down the stairs
lined with photo collages
your family extended through
three sons, a daughter,
and us, nieces and nephews
you adopted, took in
as needed through various
stages of adolesence and adulthood

In the back room of the basement
a wall of albums you filled
with loving clicks and grins
Captured here our lives
recorded by you, our faithful historian

Now it is our turn to remember you
preserve you with snapshots of our own

The deck overlooking the mountains
Those great big dogs
you taught me not to fear
The smell of a pipe smoked
a decade or two too long
The puzzles kept around to challenge us
because you thought we were all geniuses
A passion for geneology
enlarging your love of family

Your morning rants at the paper
over a kitchen table shared as generously
as wisdom, kindness, life

---
(With no apologies for sentimentality)

Au revoir...