Hiatus

Hiatus

Pauses between fixations
full of flying river bugs
left & right hovering,
the humid afternoon
leafily tarted up
in the quiet neighbour's
fanfare back yard.

I am watching from a narrow balcony
four floors up,
the way he rests between
bouts of weeding the vegetable patch,
his wobbly garden chair set next
to a line of vivid tulips
that opened day before yesterday.

In my lap, dog-eared Sexton
morphing the helium of her scrutinized pain
into a bartering of light-headed gardens
circa 1963.

Nothing is where I'd have it –
all like the fragile makings
of a vigorous failed poem
that can't stop sorting through
a knack for lost beginnings.

Fugue of 7 Beatles' Songs Revisited

Fugue of 7 Beatles' Songs Revisited


The Fool on the Hill


Last stand. Eyeballing inward. Mania glut.
In the distance, urban landmarks pool
the rise & fall, scorn & torn, open & shut.
Fences fallen away. Apathy. The Fool
seated cross-legged in brown Spring grass
holding whims of refusal together.
All that he is, all that he finally has
testing the mettle of psychic weather
dumbed down. Sham third eye. Ohm. Bright vowels
& chapped lips peeling. Scruffy Mount Royal
where the homeless know better than to howl.
Sex trade workers. Picnickers. Spoils.
Dog in a manger without a manger.
Squished pop can. Century butt end. Strangers.


A Day in the Life


Squished pop can. Century butt end. Strangers.
Who is who already you in drag.
All those possibilities, dangers
post-dated, daft. Mindset of a time lag
between unranked phenomena. Mouse trap
in a pet shop. Necessities. Loud speakers.
On the internet Tuesday weather map
indications the day will call for sneakers
that know how to sweat. Accidents set
in repressed small print, all eyes on it.
Grim headlines for Iraq & Global debt.
A small boy's racing intentions split
between How & If – never Why.
Press a button. Shun steroids. Leap. Die.


I Me Mine


Press a button. Shun steroids. Leap. Die.
The middle way bows elsewhere, silken cheeked.
The truth is innocent – the truth has to lie
or be carefully guarded, then slyly leaked
to ensure the triumph of dead men dancing
under the pocked moon. Such gorgeous flight
or fight response – small claims enhancing
fishbowl dreaming among the far Right,
the blowhard egoists. Shush, shush
the cellular bells that toll for thee
believably, pointedly, choreographed, lush
in a way you've been taught it can never be.
For now what's of interest has you in mind.
Take up the chorus – I Me Mine.


Across the Universe


Did you take up the chorus? I Me Mine?
Gauche mistakes – millennia – star light.
Tempest in a handshake. Mandala design
exploded, celestial, token-bright.
Nothing's gonna change my world today
bareback-stormy, broken, of a piece
with recycled tunes – also ways to pray
wordlessly into a soothing release
from gnawing desire. Nothing will spin
the tick, tock, flip, flop out of control.
No thing inside here will lose or win –
stung sum of parts greater than the whole.
Tantrum laughter. Pining. Moot silence.
Niches of shadow. Blood heart. Violence.


Helter Skelter


Niches of shadow, blood heart, violence –
all for true love with no hedging of bets
till labouring over the need for pretense,
method goes awry, doubt collects.
Kiss me or no by the frail garden gate.
Ask me to supper – de-cork the wine.
Choose between pledges & wriggling bait.
Loosen your fear grip, take your sweet time
like a song still deciding – song full of flaws
bewitching/enticing/stalling/claw-red –
turncoat rhythmic, studded with pause –
slippery-evasive – chasing the dead.
Turn down the volume. Hush – I'm still here –
pulse in your blue wrist, tongue in your ear.



Black Bird


Pulse in your blue wrist, tongue in your ear.
Into the light of the dark black night
circling. The fool on the hill's been here.
Bread crumb path. Prickly vines. Winter's sight
sweeping ever & a day away.
& back again. Deep breath. Alone time.
Stop. Start. Imagine. Replay
the way you might a teasing slant rhyme.
Obstacles. Worry beads. Heavy air
weighing down a well used, heavy heart.
Say the gods give no more than we can bare;
to know when to start's a rich art.
Up ahead what you see may be what you get.
Mind advances sideways. Not there yet…


I am the Walrus


Advancing sideways – not there yet.
In the distance, urban landmarks swell.
Sex trade workers. Businessmen. Vets.
The third eye sees, just can't tell.
On the pixel screen Monday's weather map –
no rain today, no sun tomorrow.
Black bird steals your baseball cap –
good lovers steal, bad lovers borrow.
Tempest handshake. Press a button. Leap.
Fishbowl-dream the pockmarked moon.
Semolina pilchards ten eggmen deep –
pray no one will give up too soon.
At any rate hold fast to your squatter's hut –
last stand – eyeballing – mania glut.

The Canadian Tag Team

From Charlie, courtesy of Emily: A poet-seeking missile is heading to earth from outer space philistines. Only three contemporary poets (besides you) will be able to survive in the bomb shelter. Which three poets do you choose to save and why?

Phyllis Webb - a farout Canadian poet`s poet, somebody in her 70s by now who I`m already afraid might disappear in spite of stellar work. So much I want to ask her, about her anti-ghazals, all the poets she knows & has known, about living writing for years in a small house on a pleasant Gulf island which legend has it is filled to the rafters with unpublished work - she is already a survivor actually - I figure her sparse (if possibly voluminous) work needs protection, not her...

Leonard Cohen - oh I`m gathering a spiritual bunch with peculiar takes on the world & love, as well as on the spiritual. Would love to get Webb & Cohen talking...

Margaret Atwood - geez - all my poets are over 65!! But I figure Atwood`s hardy, will outlive me, & with all the work we`ll have to do just to survive, she`ll get back into more poetry, no time for those brick novels of hers (I do like them too though).

Teetering Titles

I'm a title junkie, not just, not even mainly, of poetry book titles – rather, book titles in general. Really must be the would be poet in me, seeing so much in a few clicking words – much that has nothing to do with the books in question sometimes. When I used to write songs for a band, more than once a glance at a bookshelf got me going lyrically, & the titles didn't even need to be that unusual – for example Living by Fiction (Annie Dillard) & The telling of lies (Timothy Findley). The first is the title of a book about narrative writing, the second a novel about a checkerboard childhood.

Some titles I like:

Hopeful Monsters

A Brief History of Everything

Hanging Fire

Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

Womanizing Nietzsche

Parasites of Heaven

Voltaire's Bastards

The Savage Mind

The Opposites Within

Main Brides

Long Day's Journey Into Night

Blooded Thought

Saint Maybe

Under A Glass Bell

etc etc etc – Geez – There's so many poems waiting to happen to me when I scan those shelves – it's almost as good as picking up a dictionary – almost as good & sometimes better – The Imago Bird…

I've Been Passed a Baton

1. The person who passed the baton to you?
jenni , bless her heart (excellent blog).

2. Total volume of music files on your computer.
I really haven't got into downloading music files - simply play cds I have as well as CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) radio station.

3. The title and artist of the last CD you bought.
Fleist - a fantastic jazzy female artist with quirky songwriting abilities. She won a juno (canadian music award) this year, which was surprising given her non-mainstream creds. Play this cd lots.

4. Song playing at the moment of writing.
Well it's the morning & I've got CBC on, a documentary on Bosnia - lol. Unlike jenni, it is not silence I need to hear myself but rather a kind of white noise. Some how it shuts down the plethora of voices going on in my head all the time - don't ask - voices that make, for example, silent meditation difficult for me. When I do stick a cd in, I often leave it playing over & over & over while writing, at intervals clicking into what's on with my ears, but mostly just feeling the rhythms sort of unconsciously. Some faves I like to throw on: Feist, LHASA (album The Living Road, a montrealer who sings in english, french, & portuguese - mostly english), Pigeon Hole, Once Blue, Tom Waits Greatest Hits (!!!!) - a whole bunch of stuff, mostly women, with songs I really dig.

i'm passing this baton on to Jill , Laurel & ..M..

Chasm

Chasm

Yes it's getting bad
but what can I do
when all I have are answers
to questions you won't ask
since you don't even see them
as questions worth breath.

You've managed of late
to unclench your heart
& oh - doesn't that feel good,
sleep & balm together
presided over by
a dull tooth of a star
with no intention of cutting
the night sky open.

I must be leaving out
something crucial - that must be it -
otherwise you'd understand
I don't elect to tell you this
for frivolous nothing.

I need a new line - the kind of line I hate -
one traveling comatose merely
to get to the other side.

For Some Things It Doesn't Matter Which Season

For Some Things It Doesn't Matter Which Season


As snow falls on crusty streets,
too-dense angel hair thickening traffic,
tree fringe half-fried in ice,
I turn as if ready to meet
my maker on a whim – complete
surrender to my sense of cold as a howling catalyst
pock marking psyche.

Summer is friction & the yellow urban sky –
thin shirts, dusty seeds – all about
wedges of sunlight, exotic fruits
I can find & handle, cleave into,
the mouth made to matter,
evenings weary
as sweating brick.

But always in the thick of it:
itch of weather gone predictably haywire,
expectant times of day
like mood-strums, fault lines;
catch in the throat a hassle
of would-be closure crookedly
swallowing fey air.