As our world winds
through the stars,
do we leave sparks
in our wake?
Do we leave others guessing
what voices we use,
and what good
friends we’d make?
Are we more than
a falling garnet or
just a crashing bore
for heaven’s sake?
As our world winds
through the stars,
do we leave sparks
in our wake?
Do we leave others guessing
what voices we use,
and what good
friends we’d make?
Are we more than
a falling garnet or
just a crashing bore
for heaven’s sake?
The smog-laden tangerine fog
tinted by a million lamplights
lays heavy tonight;
the busy rustle of the city’s moves
lost in its depths
like the delicate harmonies of a dulcimer
played in the attic as heard in the basement.
Closer, much closer, I hear
the lazy rustle of the scorpion
picking carelessly at a pecan shell.
I blink in the orange darkness.
the autobiography of a mayfly
would be as short as a page
and as dense as perfect memory
the madness of dashing hither and yon
across the summer’s blue distance
to seek the one mate of perfect desire
the need to avoid the bloodletting wars
of birds and trout at cool water’s edge
to arrive in one piece at the perfect location
the keenness of invention, of new hieroglyphics,
to tempt her away from the maddening crowds
to sing her, to win her with this perfect dance
the sense of fulfillment, slowly drifting to earth
with all power spent, all duty completed
to remember, to listen to the end of this perfect life
Big in size
but with a squeaky little voice,
Canada is like
an effeminate linebacker
facing the south-of-49ers
across the goal line of an undefended border.
We have steroids without strength
mass without muscle.
We are
a huge collapsable shell of a country.
We survive
because the Americans cannot be bothered
to deal with the
PR flak
that would inevitably follow
the easy pushover.
Could Celine Dion save us?
Or Bryan Adams or Margaret Atwood?
Or even Douglas Coupland, Tony Onley and the Bare Naked Ladies linking arms?
No.
Not even the whole mess
of Canadian culture
— bilingual and multicultural —
could save us
if the Americans put their minds to it.
The manifest destiny
of globalization
ensures that it will happen
one day, some day.
And then many of us will become
marginalized Americans
like Idahoans or Puerto Ricans.
Maybe we’ll qualify for grants
and affirmative action
as the third largest minority
after
blacks and hispanics.
Maybe we’d alter American politics
for ever
with our semi-socialists
and our semi-fascists
and our quaint idea that government can occasionally
be a good thing.
More likely, we’ll become
a minor market for Wal Mart
an inconvenience for weather forecasters
and a fiscal drain
on southwestern startups
and other entrepreneurs.
If there’s a futures market for snow, native land
claims and Gallic intransigence,
Maybe they could sell us
to Norway
where benefits are better.
He
drove
her home after dinner.
They dawdled for a moment on the porch until the wind
drove
them inside where, after drinks,
their mutual passion
drove
them to seek the comforts of the bedroom, and where
her exuberant energy
drove
him mad with desire, and where
he
drove
his knifeblade deep into
her heart
He was
driven
they said, seeking to excuse
his excess,
his access to those parts of
her body which even this exhorbitantly open society doesn’t allow.
Driven
he was
they said by television violence and devil music and commercial
radio and the
drive-throughs
he was forced to eat at as a child by
his working mother.
His vanished other parent
driven
he learned to drink by
his inabilty to access the excess promised to all by the features
he sat through at the
drive-in.
His mother and father coincidentally killed in
drive-bys
he read about two continents and two decades apart.
Driven
they said by these circumstances to commit
his act
her death
they killed
him by
driving
his last of a long line of needles deep into
his arm. And then, in an unmarked car,
they
drove
his body to
his last home, just as
he had
driven
her to the first and last home
they would ever share.
we sleep together,
for sure,
but mostly we share together,
cutting out our memories
from the bark of life’s tree
— like pieces of collage
laid out on the floor
before an exhibition
celebrating our anniversaries –
unhurriedly pasting them together
— refocusing colors and shapes
and forms –
until it is late again
and again
for sure
we sleep together
She fumed
and fumed loud.
And as she
disabused me
of my place
in the human
race — given
my lineage
must be replete
with morons and
monkeys —
her otherwise neat
and clipped
peroration
was interlarded
with sailors’ slang
and potty talk,
and ended with
a red-faced
squalk.
“Fair dinkum, gal,”
I replied,
smiling the smile
that’ll usually
sink ’em.
Stonefaced,
nothing. I sighed
and completed
the refund
that would send
her away.
Thank God,
I’m stoned
all day.
The bus ride finished a mile from the shore
leaving a trek through the muddy clay
of rain-spattered early spring,
the swarming midges of late July,
or the leafy carpet of middle fall,
to the beach at the end of the world.
Sitting on a sea-driven log,
a carcass of the far northern woods,
my lover and I cleared our throats with lemonade,
quietly removed the stings of another week,
and populated our thoughts with waves of dreams
far removed from the drab of every day.
Childhood is
a flat green blade growing from the stem of a plant,
the absorbing and digesting of
a body of myths
Adolescence is
the property of becoming self-luminous
in the recognition of
fire and hunger and strong desire
Adulthood is
the acceptance of the heat and light caused by burning;
a steady flow that rises
as the tide, and ebbs
Wisdom is
known only to those of special comprehension,
something very white,
a leaf blown across the firmament
Death is
the beginning of all things, the nape
that links the body of one life to
the head of the next
He had long ago accepted the loss as permanent,
but that acceptation was merely a gloss, as yet skin deep,
not yet having bled into the very marrow of his being,
nor led him to that place of serenity.
His bitterness lay as deep as the roots of cedar in shale,
following tracks as distant and serpentine as the staged attacks
of true hackers working their miraculous juju through the internet
ether, and forever ending in a sad soiled grace.
And, though he could choose to confuse his loneliness with tragedy –
as if he were the sainted prophet of his own persecuted
exarchate in exile — it was but loneliness nonetheless,
and it hurt as bad as the arrows of martyrdom.
I have seen the best minds of my generation squander their extraordinary talents on the marketing of consumer goods and the maintenance of shareholder value.
I have seen them abandon all pretence of worker’s rights at the behest of foreign and domestic bankers, Friedmanites from Chicago and MIT.
I have seen them relegate the environment to the dustbin, a victim in the race for quarterly profits and analysts expectations.
I have seen them treat safety issues as public relations issues, and seen them lobby to lessen their liability.
They have shamed seniors into wearing diapers, taught children how to smoke, and taunted teens into starving themselves to death.
They have sold goods that have killed millions, children, pregnant women, families, clans, tribes and nations, here and around the world.
They have spiked the waters of the masses with a poison called greed.
They have swallowed our ethics and morals and spat them back in our faces as branded goods for which it is right and necessary that we pay to display their logos.
You have contributed to their victory with every discretionary purchase, every dollar saved or spent.
You have accepted their world view with every envious glance, every lottery ticket purchase, every time you have watched a TV program starring “celebrities” or giving away a million dollars.
You have bowed to the inevitable with each ring of the alarm clock, each punch of the work clock, each end-of-week celebration.
You have become your parents, your older sister, your Uncle Frank with his shiny pants, your parents once again.
I have purchased things I could have made myself.
I have allowed my city to become plastered with advertising slogans, from store signs to billboards to the names of buildings and arenas.
I have dressed my children in designer labels, given then Elmo dolls and Flintstone vitamins, and let them choose CocoPops and TV cartoons over papaya and reading for breakfast.
I have enough of everything I need, and yet forever I need more; and
We have accepted all this bullshit, washed it down with the liquid lies of the liberal’s election hoax.
We have time and again made the wrong choice; time and again we have meekly accepted that the choices we are offered are the only choices possible.
We have been active participants in our own kidnapping, paying the ransom over and over again.
We have failed ourselves — and the bastards have won. At least for now.
Staying quiet,
— stealing silence like a prayer —
The tented flag throws shadows
across my pen and arm.
Blowing bubbles,
— Stealing time like a burglar —
Watching kaleidescopes of sunbeams
instead of working.
The woman with crow’s feet wrinkles
and smeared makeup
unfolded the billfold
removing the twenties and leaving the fives
— she had doubled her money and was willing
to leave him
cab fare home.
She waited a minute,
sharp ears listening to the spattering rain
and the flight of an early flock
flying north for the summer.
Slipping on the plastic green raincoat
she slipped out of the room,
leaving him undisturbed
in the empty barn
of his sex-sodden dreams.
You were young men in the Guards
treading water in wretched trenches
swinging kitbags and rifles and broad silly grins
so young
that two billion volumes single-spaced wouldn’t be enough
to list all of life’s treasures
you haven’t experienced yet
and still you would die
right then
right there
doing right
or so you thought
as you lay where
no-one could tell where
mud ended and blood began
three and four generations removed,
we lay wreathes for your wraiths
on a hollow day in November
while the parades and the poppies
hallucinate
an annual landscape of memory
profound today, gone tomorrow
and for three or four days the flowers fade
and the greenery browns at your memorials
and then the work crews come
young men and women with guarded futures
treading water at minimum wage
swinging brooms and shovels and black plastic bags
and when the work trucks leave
your memory has turned once again
to cold undecorated stone
and nothing can ever change
the fact
that you died before you started living.
He stands erect
his jacket checked at the door.
Surveys the floor
where dancers more or less perform
to an MTV norm
writhing and circling by.
With his casual clothes
and his casual attitude
to casual sex
he is already a casualty
rushing headlong for an accident
and it meets him tonight in the form of
Barbara
a Barbie-doll beauty with C-cup breasts
and a heart full of
barbarous revenge.
She picks him
she tricks him
she licks
his ego
until he stands tall and hopeful.
He buys her a drink and engages in chat
while he makes sure that
he doesn’t smell too bad.
“Come back to my pad
and fuck me,” she croons
He swoons and tries to play it cool
but his head bobs up and down
like a fat man on a trampoline.
She drives
he strives to keep it in his pants
tries to make small talk
but just kind of rants
about nothing in particular,
his cock bent reticular in anticipation.
She parks and barks,
“We’re here.”
In the condo
he tries to fondle her charms,
but she wriggles from his arms.
“Show me what you got to arouse us.”
So he drops his trousers.
His flagpole slowly wanes in the breeze of her
obvious indifference.
Less than impressed
she refuses to divest
the clothes from her blessed
body.
Instead, like a cat, she screeches,
“Whaddya call that?
Some kind of bonsai?
I’ve had 12 year olds bigger than you, boy,
and 70 year old royals making me come.
So I’m not gonna sleep
with some self-absorbed creep
with a prick the size of my thumb.”
He went home by bus
didn’t make a fuss
just pulled the trigger
gave a small shiver
like the third orgasm of the night
It was the first thing he’d done right
all day.
A bright orange salamander silently slithers
the length of the soft-pink stone-chip wall,
making faster speed than I could in this heat.
I sit, staring, mesmerized by this costumed athlete,
this splendid natural explosion of colour,
this distraction from the dull monochrome of my life.
With a desperate reluctance, I crack open the velcro
ties that bind me to the lizard, drawing back my focus
to include my companion and the unfinished wine.
“Let’s review where we are,” she says. “Yes,
let’s do that,” I reply from a distance, forgetting
where we’ve been in this conversation and why.
She clears her throat and continues: “You and I
seem to be headed nowhere, neh?” She pauses,
examining me for confirmation. Perhaps I nod.
“As a couple, I mean. We have to come to terms
with that. We have to face the true nature of our failure
you and I. We are not meant to be, that’s the point.”
I say: “I see.” I feel her eyes burning me, expecting more.
Across the street, the afternoon shoppers flow in and out
of department stores and groceries and fish merchants.
“Well?” she presses. “Am I right? What do you think?”
I sip the wine, close both my eyes, and imagine
the cool cave where the salamander rests.
You are magnetic north;
All my paths converge on you.
You are the tropics;
my Cancer and my Capricorn.
You are the forests;
the leafy groves where my dreams dwell.
You are the mountains,
with heights I could not imagine.
You are the seven seas;
I bob on your waves and tides.
You are the equator;
the widest part of my existence.
You are my world.
Sitting bolt
upright
in the chair
the psycho
analyst
questioned me
in a game of
snappy
word association
frost:tossed
gold:bold
why did you
say that?
why not?
tend:er is the night
sleep:sleep
shoes:Michael Jordan
did you watch
the game?
no, I was crazy
to have missed it
air:Michael Jordan
web:net
net:basket
they make me
make
baskets.
Like I’m
Michael Jordan
or something
Frank Zappa, Jerry Garcia, Brian Jones
And all those Grateful Rolling Mothers
Taught me that play is serious business
That play lives in the moment
That play is life
That an extended bluesy riff
Is infinitely more important than a timeclock
That a jiving rolling rock tune
Weighs so much more than a brand new car each year
So much more than a mortgage
And a closet of three-piece suits
That Janis Joplin was more beautiful than Ally MacBeal
That Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix
died for our sins
that their deaths preceeded ours by just a blink
in geological time
that if music be the food of love
I am obese with passion
That a great rythym guitar is better
Than bad sex
And that great sex is even better with rock and roll pounding in your head.
Play on, dead heroes
Play on and on and on ….
It was easy to place History before Politics,
Medicine before Physicians; and
“Snow Fell on Cedars”
had to come after
“Escape From Alcatraz”.
But how was he to choose
Literature over Culture
or Astronomy over Alchemy?
And Asimov could go anywhere,
With his reflections about water
On the half-moons of Venus.
With bookcases brushing the ceilings,
And more volumes stacked halfway up walls,
melding the books, shuffling the pages,
was turning out to be the hardest part
of moving in together.
Amid the piles of unsorted memoirs he halted,
His unpacking abandoned.
He remembered the dancing, the dinners,
The walking.
It was easy to place Love before Duty.