palimpsest

Hey all,

Just thought I'd let you know that the all knocked up poems that appeared here have been accepted for publication by a boutique chapbook press called Palimpsest Press.

And so, now that the first glad shock has worn off, I wanted to thank all of youse for your contributions to the ms.

Yours,

Ariel

blog on blog action...

...which is the title of Rob McLennan's recent post on Canadian poetry blogs, where May Day is mentioned:

The collaborative ones are particularly interesting, including the one Ariel Gordon, Bren Simmers & others keep, as well as this one (when does Gordon find time to do anything else?) or this one, by folk I don't seem to know, as are the geographically-related collaborative blogs, including the one Rob Budde plays about in his northern British Columbia, The Calgary Blow-Out, or trans-cribing Canada, the Winnipeg Words, or my own attempts through the ottawa poetry newsletter. I think Anansi has touring authors get blogs, which is why (it seems) Lisa Moore started, and Michael Winter too, but he keeps going...

(Of course, much of this is hyperlinked, which you can't see in my quoting - see the original for the specific references...)

Fun!

That clematis

...sure gets around.

No hablo obligado, según pacere

or, Wow:
Six for Thirty-one. Such Logoyalty!
if only to
not mention
Just Moved Back In
With My Former Ex,
due to the skyrocketing price of independence
from Previous Exes,
who shall remain namelessly singular
(& already missing my subterranean getaway
[at bargain basement prices,
you'd think the spiders, sowbugs* & centipedes
would be extra] )
*yeah, you know: sowbugs,
the ones I used to know as silverfish,
except they're grey & their only connection to bodies of water
are dank basements &, Dank Sei Gott,
I no longer have to worry about such entomologies,
I'm above it all now, I'm a second storey man
with three cats to either
keep the upwards-of-four-legged ones in check or
just overshadow them in the landing
on their feet for attention-getting department.
Is this a poem?
I'll never know,
nor will the mouse that punctuated
the first evening before bed
in that other place.
But farewell anyway,
it's time to leave the nest
or coccoon, or whathaveyou.
I've got bigger webs to fry than bottles to spin.
Just because The Era of Canora is over,
doesn't mean that even greater harmoniety isn't
in the air
or the wings
(paper beats the rock I
crawled out from under,
& wings beat air).
I'm getting ready to like
a canary sing.
J'arrive, ma chere.
May we each fly, spanish
or otherwise,
vraiment!

the last day

Hey all,

I meant to write a final poem today...but didn't. I also meant to vacuum. What did happen was more than good enough for the last day of May and included clean laundry hauled upstairs, frivolous reading while supine, and a decent smoked salmon and caper sandwich in a sunlit cafe (feet up, feet up).

Also a nice hug or two when all was said and done.

Not to ramble on or anything, but I wanted to say how glad I was that the May Day Poetry Project got a second airing, that all of youse wanted to participate this time around, and that I had the chance to read and be read by such nifty poets.

Keep in touch, if you're so inclined.

If not, maybe I'll see you around these parts next year, eh?

Yours,

A.

CONGRATULATIONS!!!!

You guys are amazing! Sorry I wasn't able to join you for the last couple of weeks - it was fun for me while it lasted. Thanks to everyone for your kind comments and good suggestions!

I will try to make some more comments over the next few days. I hope several of the poems here get edited and submitted for publication. Would love to see updates here on any that do get published.

Congrats again and all the best in your writing!

Last post

Thanks so much for the great opportunity to take part in May Day. I enjoyed it, thanks for the comments, and hope all the editing/revision for everyone pays off big time.



Annals of May
(for Gertrude)


1. Write a poem about a flower.
2.
3. Write a poem about a flower.
4.
5. Write a poem about a flower.
6.
7. Write a poem about a flower.
8.
9. Write a poem about a flower.
10.
11. Write a poem about a flower.
12.
13. Write a poem about a flower.
14.
15. Write a poem about a flower.
16.
17. Write a poem about a flower.
18.
19. Write a poem about a flower.
20.
21. Write a poem about a flower.
22.
23. Write a poem about a flower.
24.
25. Write a poem about a flower.
26.
27. Write a poem about a flower.
28.
29. Write a poem about a flower.
30.
31. Write a poem about the poems about the flowers.

refrain


let's have one last poem
about gardens, another round
for all green and thirsty things,
for ideas in bloom and soil
that blackens our knees and notebooks

we'll write just once more
on may rain, final storm
of words before the month tucks under,
before those tentative shoots
of heat reach deep, sapping
ink and leaving pages
sunstruck and limp

we'll plant another handful
of stanzas to see us through
the summer, then find
a shady place to let our pens sleep


thanks to you all for a great -- and challenging! -- experience. the comments, comaraderie, and group energy really helped to see me through. nice working with you all! ~k.

Summer

Wet swimming trucks peel from legs, flip
flops slap-pitty-slap asphalt
as the ice cream truck plays its tired invitation.
Lawnmowers make their last rounds
before cricket reverb, sprinkler’s consonants
fan across the yard. Mosquito drillsaw
against the screen. Moths pour
like batter on the hot 60W,
no calamine for their itch.
The motion sensor strobes all night
as raccoons driveby garbage cans,
white-gloved. Red-eyes
begin their final descent
as birdsong pelts the window
with its gibberish.


---
My last post. Thanks for all your comments!! It's been great. I've caught lots of new poems that otherwise would have disappeared into couch cracks and fuzzy thinking. Wishing you all luck with revision! Till next time...

Another Year

OK, so birthdays are not
such a big deal to some people,
but yours I must celebrate.
Do you know your age
is the same as
the year of my birth? 51?
These little things
hold significance for me.
How could I know
at the age of four
you were being born
into the world and would
someday enter my world
and save my life?
If only I had a small window
to see your happy baby face
to hear you clap your hands
in patty cake when your mother
played and made you the darling
you are today. I would have
known to wait and be
less afraid of all the slaps
that were not play
but came my way.
I did not know, you were
already here, a short ride
in the family station wagon
would have brought me to your door.
But I would still have been alone
before we bumped together
all those years later,
joined in such frenzied passion
we were both amazed each morning
that going to work was only
an afterthought and I waited
breathless and safe for your
sure return. Bad things evaporated.
Do you wonder that I celebrate
each measurement of time
since the day you were born
and tie happy ribbons to each
minute of your smile?
I celebrate with more light than candles
the life I still manage to find
each day because you caught me
when I was falling from the ledge
I had crawled out on
to escape the pain of me,
and I have never left your arms.
Everyday is cake.

balance


you are steady, level
as these lines i write
myself between, tightropes
i nudge uncertain words
along, watch them wave at loss:
balance, confidence, reason

i am a stumbler, clumsy
as my own handwriting,
tripping over our margins,
scarring anything white,
inscrutable when i place
all my weight in your ruled care

Summer Song

The fan drones on in tonal circles
moving air as water pipes rumble
bass like, clarinet rubber hoses feed
assorted cheap sprinklers.

From another room
the ice maker clatters it’s frozen load
into a bin of cubes, then stirs
and whines a stream of water
into ice trays.

A fat fly slipped in through the mail slot
and is bouncing it’s repeated buzzing
off the windows in stupid confusion
buzzing and thumping the glass

again and again
in a comforting –
not for the fly –

rhythm, calling attention
to solid walls, drum-like
in percussive abilities
beating every hot sound
from in or out to shape
the heat of the long day.

A stray cricket is loose
in the basement singing
an odd fiddling refrain
from it’s dank confines,
serenading the power tools
and silent appliances.

With a little player’s luck
it will find a window cracked
and return to the main orchestra
for the evening performance
where night moths applaud
quiet in the humid hush
under the whispering stars.

A Map of Empire

When was the last time your shoulders felt relaxed? Somedays you wonder if there aren’t bicycle tires and mixmasters, a junk heap of shoulds walking the tightrope of your trapezius. And let’s not even talk about your neck, how you think it might be out of line and you’ve started to crack it yourself, even though you know it’s bad. Just like crossing your legs torques your hips out of alignment. See, you just did it again.

Close your eyes for a minute and think of all the things you let into the soft tissue of your body. Car alarms, exhaust, pesticides and additives. Learned habits and gestures. That thing you do with your hands, or the way you cough in the morning when you haven’t had enough sleep, clearly from your mother. Or how a memory of your grandfather can lodge can itself in your elbow. That first time he took you out play tennis, whacking balls against the side of the garage till your arm hurt, and you had to stop. He’s dead now. Cancer. Worked at the mill twenty-six years. Twenty-six years, you put two and two together.

He always said empires are built on our backs, our shoulders, our necks. It’s no wonder you’re tired and want to go to bed. Somedays it’s enough just to stand and not weep at the headlines, to take the recycling out. To keep open, so that you can let one more good thing in.


---
This is something I wrote for my theatre class, more of a monologue than a poem? Not sure if the title works, or if opening with a question is too invasive.

Nine months: sweet nothings

I am a balloon oily with fingerprints under the shirt of this season
flaccid from escaped sips of air the friction of fingers
and the string that connects him and me is these lines
is all the words sighs songs ever exhaled between us
and now lips to belly he blows bewildered endearment
as though you were the faintest orb
a seedpod that could be dispersed
with the least breeze
to me you are a series of wet sneezes
that bent me double a wet wheeze a huff puff
that could kill off any wolf at any door
you are the storm that blew in humid and stayed
squatting over all the corners
and corridors of my city
but between the slow moan of the balloon
and the consumptive heave of the storm
the knot neither of us has yet to try
is that sound the lilt the tilt of the head
is always more important than sentiment
you sweet nothing you

* * *

Speaking of ruts, here's another baby poem...but I suppose it's appropriate, in that art generally imitates life. I can't stop talking about baby, either...but then, neither can anyone else.

I'm glad May's almost finished, otherwise I might be forced to write odes to my recently acquired mu-mus.

Found

Rummaging through containers
of old seeds and garden twine
he found a pair of amber earrings
and brought them to her
in a small white swan,
some plastic wedding favor
from a distant cousin’s nuptials—

the opalescent swan
bending it’s pearly head
like a ride in a park lake
holding the precious amber bits
in the hollow of it’s back, a gift,

and all the delicious smells and
distant sounds, the shape of the shops
in that pastel Mexican village
where jewelry was purchased
come gliding back, leaving a wake
on the surface of time spent there
a vast lake of recollection

with it’s own depths and golden liquidity,
smelling like desert mountain air
corn and peppers and sugar
in autumn, the year they escaped
convoluted holiday suppers in the states

and hid in another language,
a feast far from turkeys
with mariachi bands
playing tunes while she wore
the novel amber ornaments,
honey resin set in silver
swaying in the garden courtyard
overflowing with tropical bougainvillea,
fountains flowing

and the two of them hiding
for a season
seemed so obvious,
a sensible decision

making it all right to wait
sleepy in the afternoons,

waiting for improved
timing to reappear,
as the amber earrings
have recalled.

sigh. another poem about the weather. i'm in a major, end-of-may rut.


matinee


clouds so low, so dark
they're grey blades
of a helicopter we duck
from, but watch warily

supple trees doubled,
afternoon crushed
by downdraft, scattered

we salvage what we can
grab, slide between fenceboards,
squeeze sideways from the day

i leave my gardening gloves
palm-up on the lawn,
two helpless hands
unable to cup the rain
we can't hear or see
inside the blacker day
of the movie theatre

bachelor buttons

the neighbour’s single idea
years narrowed by playing

the field, muddied feet forever sunk
in front lawns weeded in tantrums

keeps his brush cut head tidied
visits the barber on the corner

every two weeks, pays bills
weeks behind, trades clothes

in second hands, drinks beer
or cheap rye, the heart always

stronger than the liver, his last
date fourteen springs ago

every winter hungrier than the last
yet he keeps his blue more than the faith

that each year something good
will eventually blossom

Headlines

When a popsicle costs a dollar, we stop taking twenty out of the machine and advance to one hundred. Housing prices eat upward on their graphs; half a million dollars now a starter home. At the bus stop outside the ferry terminal, a teenage boy fists a bottle of pop. We still drink to dull the senses. Excitement slurs his words, all huh-huh-huh’s. Beside him, stands a girl in heels and a short pleated skirt. At thirteen, I wasn’t ready for the need that entered, loveless. My best friend’s mom calling to say it was time for me to wear a bra. Now there are girls as early as ten that want to.

In conversation, we repeat ourselves for emphasis. "A 64 year old bus supervisor beat up over a fare dispute, now he’s got liver damage. 64 years old. Can you believe it? Christ." What do we do with this information? An 11 year old girl abducted, then found. Six dead in an aerial raid. I can’t help but wonder if we store it in our bodies as illness.

People wait for their luggage at the baggage pickup, trust their belongings will be returned safely to them. A small comfort. The bus arrives. We fold up the paper and go home. There are bills to pay. Everyday, a little less certain, we can shop our way out of escalated conflict and one in four breast cancer rates.

summer snow


we wake up from a heavy dream
of summer -- so real we'd lifted
the window in our sleep to hear robins

the yard thick with a new snow
of elm seeds, round flakes
collecting in the folds
of tree-whipped porch screens,
like frost tatting windows in january

seeds gather in drifts, patch
the sidewalk cracks and catching
in the new blooms of iris,
blotting out forget-me-nots

we'd only just met the garden,
but we recognize its white absence
we expect to see our breath
as we stoop to pack snowballs
that disintegrate as they leave our hands

we rummage for shovels, scrape
the car, then stamp on the mat
tracking in snow that won't melt,
just wanders into the corners
and takes root, refusing
each pass of the broom

Crossing The Line

The broken fence will soon be mended
snaggletoothed slats all straightened
and realigned like a successful
dentist’s appointment, with only
a minimum amount of pain.

The city committee that calls itself
The Board of Adjustment
is making the neighbors adjust
the boards in their fence, after
the disarray of winter finally caught

the eye of some inspector. No amount
of good fencing will make these
neighbors good, but at least we
will be spared the sight of their

poor dog trying to squeeze through

in search of a yard where flowers
are allowed to bloom and wither
naturally, not beheaded in their prime
because they are staining the concrete.

from yesterday...

humidity


trees huddle link
elbows and lean
in a dozen feet at least
over your head
but still you duck as you run
airway shrinking the path
a slow strangle of green

you use your hands to rip
away thin tripwires
garottes of caterpillar silk

windless hot in that way
shade can't slake the morning
airtight your throat choked
with indecisive insects

tendrils of rain pulled taut
around you but wetness
won't register on your skin
already slippery with the steady
work of feet and heart pumping
either end of a two-man saw your body
its wake of spent webs and stumps

Eight months: the gathering

As lightning flares like high beams through our window
I wake grunting to a gathering of trains
and your father shuffled over to the far rail
so like a log in some already polluted body of water
I can turn and turn again grunt and rise
only gets louder evacuating deep breaths
that shudder the room

I turn to hold him so that you can kick him too
and you do adding toes
to the skin of this early morning
the rain the last of the lightning
the still sounding trains

A car outside honks as the heavy fingers of rain
hands on gates on windows sills on all the scales
of my plinking night time fear descend
but these are no solitary loon calls
to the edges of night to the few lights in the distance
they are tight and sounding every few seconds
these are not worms surfacing for the rain
there are men staring out into the train yards
men moving between pneumatic rooms
and sounding the horns

The storm breaks through the sirens
all the thunder of trains shaking themselves
until it seems the sky the ground is shaking
my spine bearing your travels up and down the body
on schedule but oh it is so late

Across the city the trains shake themselves like dogs
like horses impatient for their hierarchy
their coupling and uncoupling regimented
long before this barrel race
shudder against flies against cold or boredom
back and forth precise adjustments
unknown to the pinions the gears
but necessary to the men that move them
shudder and shudder until there is a flash of light
and I think storm and I think trains and I think storm

And I can’t see out except into sleep
into this darkened room his breath
and I am too warm misaligned somehow
but like the night like the first thunderstorm of the season
this too will end the lights will flicker but come on
the sand behind my eyelids the grit at the curb
will wash away

I sleep and sleep again and wake
to a car speeding down the alley
leaving a streak in the puddles
in the unseen smear of night
skidding on wet grit and concrete
police sirens trailing after the brightening sky
like all of this has only been the winding
of the day’s gears

At the window again I want to know
which effects were the slippery turns of the log
the shift between night and day winter and spring
gestation and germination
which were the fingers of bulbs down in the yard
washed free of snow mould crystal
and soapy expectation and which were you
trying at me again

Carnations

secretive floral planners
they achieve little

pay while floundering
in factories

or they knot in shows, cheap
chorus girls overworked

underpaid, bare-breasted
bodies trained to look

good standing.

As dusk approaches like
another evening walker smiling,
an unplaced neighbor strolling,

after pruning dead wood
from a skimpy rose hedge,
mostly avoiding the painful kiss

of hidden thorns, it’s only sane
that I should wander
down by the lavender mounds
and pull weeds from the feet
of fragrant feathery orbs
growing up pale purple—

hovering over the gray green fronds
tangled with ephemeral weeds—

offering no resistance, bowing out
for the lavender to hover—
pretty porcupines of blooms

sturdy living mounds
merely looking delicate

but holding aroma enough
to put clean tranquil visions
into dreams, leaving scent
from working hands in
my damp hair when loose tendrils

are brushed back from
my sweat washed forehead
and a few wands carry the
scent that is a color
back to perfume an evening.

Soaking

After watering the gardens
and watching wet fall
in so many patterns—

sprays and snaky diamond blobs
when I whipped the hose
back and forth over the startled herbs

I let myself down into the water I drew
inside the house, rushing water
making a mini waterfall, beckoning—

big pile of peach soap bubbles,
filling the tub like whipped cream—

so delicious to my hungry skin
overheated from the afternoon,
starting to show sun’s blush—

just a hint of luster from oil
and sweat, dusted with potting soil—

needing the slide into clean water,
needing to float drained limbs
in whatever pond
I can make for myself
and three yellow duckies,
my skin drinks it all in.

la fiesta


clink lean, lime-choked beer bottles,
match mouths to the round, cold lips
and leave them panting, sweating
perfect circles onto the plastic tablecloth

make a toast to spanish laughter,
to the red-banded black fedora
and the singer wearing it, to salt
and pepper and paper napkins

kiss the evening on both cheeks,
lip-prints of chilies and heat, love
leftover from the day

clap after each song, every bite
of papusa and tortilla soft
and warm as an open mouth

let your voice off its leash,
pass your hands around and let everyone lick
the spice from your palms

then, drink again, this time to the lilacs
you'll twist from branches on the walk home,
the tune you'll shoo from your lips and
the chain link fence you'll drag your hand along

nocturnal


where do poems go
on days so long and lithe
sunlight lolls all over
the sidewalks on lenore street,
stretches through mismatched fences,
meanders the verandahs until nine thirty

they must hole up, play solitaire,
wait out more flattering light --
streetlamps, porchglow, moon --
then lift their small heads,
nightcrawlers surfacing

Somebody’s Someone

The old stick lady walks the halls
pacing for memories she knows
are just around the next corner

but she keeps running into
walls when she thinks daylight
should be in the stars.

Not even an extra dose
can calm her search or help

her find the way back
to herself.

Searching for the right flower

It’s not a beginning I’m after—
my fetalled memory mimicked
each evening in heated bathing rituals.

(Tonight I cut my right knee
twice with a fresh razor, triple-
bladed for improved results).

Nor is it an end—
flour-beetles spent in spelt
cursing a kitchen coated

with little legs and bleach—
every cupboard cleared like a beach
when someone yells “shark”.

Tonight I’m looking for the middle—
some well-fashioned spell near
an already centred crust

similar to the common petunia’s
flawed shadow echoed in my mirror—
a light-weary shape steadying me.

My umbrella-body sprawls
chin up, head flush with porcelain
nothing holding but a knee.

Office Work

Come cubicle talk and paper cuts,
credit card interest that is your inbox.
Copiers and their fickle relations
with faxes and PDF’s.
Come paid coffee breaks and benefits,
stale air and industrial carpet.
Come dressed appropriately for well-oiled boredom.
Come patrons, come clients, come users
who empty their anger like a mail bag onto your desk,
who expect you to say yes, and thank them
for their business. Come willing to be scripted.
To hoard small tasks in order to feel important,
like putting the magazines out or changing
today’s date on the calendar.
Come carpal tunnel and bad posture.
Come missing a friend’s birthday
only to celebrate a co-workers.
Come ten years in, mortgaged,
and feeling like you can’t get out, can’t do any better.
Come resumes on file by the dozen, of those who would
take your place. Come inflation and 0.0.0. pay increases.
Come scissors with your name taped on them.
Come willing to stay for the pension.

good news!

Hey all,

My poem, Seven months: the navel-gaze, has been selected for The Guardian Review's Poetry Workshop's April Shortlist.

Though the poem technically isn't a part of the May Day festivities, having been written and posted in April to my blog as well as another group on-line poetry project called Taking the Brim _ Took the Broom, I believe it was the first in the All Knocked Up series I've been writing of late...

Anyways, the way the Poetry Workshop works is this: "Every month, our poetry workshop is hosted by a different poet who sets an exercise, chooses the most interesting responses and offers an appraisal of them. That's the hard part taken care of - all you need to do is start writing ..."

For April, the poet was Scottish writer Jen Hadfield and the exercize anti-praise poems.

Interestingly, in her treatise on how to write anti-praise, Hadfield cites Canadian poet Wendy Morton...

Anyways, if you haven't seen this website/exercize yet, it's well worth checking out...

(Yay!)

yesterday's poem.... again, having technical difficulties.

late may


summer knocks but kicks in
the door before we answer,
pyjamas at the foot of the bed,
we heat-dream of sleeping,
spread our fingers toward a mirage:
cool stretch of sheets, dry corner of pillow

trees mash branches
at the screen, push leaves
through mesh, into nostrils,
planting green so deep we'll have it
on our breath the end of september

a handful of breeze circles the house,
reads each piece of paper on the desk,
then huffs at the heat and leaves,
slamming the porch door

Lights Out

Sometimes you just have to leave
the dishes in the sink
and go on to bed
with no regrets. Bowls
will wait and not shrivel
for lack of water or soap.

New flats of perennials pause
in the warm night, parked on the porch,
dry soil soaked in cool water,
drenched as soon as I got them home,
but still dry out as mosquito air sucks

everything up into already soaked
stars lurking in the clouds. I’ll
need whatever juice I can muster

to rise early before the shovel of heat
hits me alongside the head
and sends me staggering back

inside. It’s a race to dig and drop
starter sets of salvias, thyme
and gaillardia – before
the sun begins baking the soil
into an overdone cake. My skin
feels hot as a done muffin. I spent

too much time in the melting
glass house picking only
what I need and can pay for—
sweat showering me in
lavender rivulets,
dizzy green swimming

through the offerings.
The living wins this round—
dirty can just wait.

Nine months: swelling and swollen

In the front street birds slide and pick at early morning
the whorls of my ears busy
with their spring fling song of staked territories
shreds of shell and exultation
remind me again that this is on schedule
like the cross-town wail of the first train
like yesterday’s strikes of rain and sun
that inflated my ankles
as though they were only ever slack inner tubes
waiting for this summer
for me to rise and resume this bloated ride

On the sidewalk the bus finds the dip where showers collect
the cobbles wetted down for a single mid-afternoon hour
spraying a confetti of dirty water up and down my legs
spring a currency none of us can spend
not the man rooted like a dandelion
in the gummy grit of spring
not the community cops that go jovial when they see him
remind me again how the cops had stripped down
bunches of lilacs
instead of guns in the small of their backs
the leaves wilting against the uniform belief
that something can be done that there will be more
than bare branches and suckers next year
and I’ll assume the solid cast of poured plaster
the soon-to-split ripeness
of another day

Slumber

Ride the crosstown bus everyday
and never see the same person twice.
Think nothing of it,
going to the store for milk
filling our baskets with more
value-added and bonus. We want
to read the paper and window shop,
have weekends off. Who doesn’t?
The first woman soldier killed in battle,
only there’s no war on. Signs
become the new landmarks, I love
hats, gas at 121.5, J76 Casualwear.
If you add up those minutes, weeks are spent
sitting next to someone on blue vinyl
saying nothing. Maybe this year we’ll write
a few donations. Get a tax write-off.
Maybe we’ll go farther into debt,
lanyards and security cards,
farther into slumber.

Well...

I fell off the poetry wagon and rolled all the way down to the bottom of the hill. In my defense, I've been writing a novel, but really there isn't any excuse other than, "ooops." I have been reading everyone else's poems regularly, however.


5 AM

The road and the sky
are the same slate grey. Everywhere
grey light, as though the coming sun
has woken the world to its own
potential for vision. We feel
very distinct, tired but clear,
our eyes wide open.

On the bridge, a man with a dog
watches the river change colour.
His shoulders are square. His
dog lays by his feet, head on paws. They could
have been there all night, they
indicate with their relaxed tableau,
they could be there all day.

It is fragile, this grey clarity. Even
as I come back alone from
the airport, the streets have begun
to lose their quiet. At the turn onto Portage,
three cars wait with mine, and at the
Tim Horton's drive through, a tail
of commuters are ordering muffins,
starting the day.

At home, I surrender to my bed
again, although I do not sleep. The cat
comes to knead your pillow and I watch
the light brighten behind the curtains,
I can't seem to close my eyes, I imagine
your plane lifting into the sky, slipping
between the sun's fingers, a grey bird
chasing night all the way to Edmonton.

Repeat Offender

A repeat offender with a radio collar,
we track his signal by satellite.
As roads tear the backcountry
into saleable morsels, corridor to campground,
he always returns, rooting about
for half-eaten hotdogs buried in ash.

Relocation’s a tricky business–
when the door to the cage slams shut,
and the bear pummels its weight
against the walls, who’ll volunteer
once we’ve flown upriver,
to stand and pull the 100m cord?
Watch the bear tear out into the scrub,
or turn, thump the ground, charge.

Three strikes, he’s out.
No life sentence or rehab,
just the long cylinder of the rifle
tracking its bullet towards the head.


----
This is Tuesday's poem, posted in the wee hours. Not sure about the narrative structure in the above poem. The tone, the use of we. I'm struggling a bit trying to get emotion into the piece. Any thoughts? Also, in lieu of missing Monday's post, here's another poem that I'll dedicate to Anna who is already a few weeks into her season in the fire tower. Somethings I don't miss about the job and 3-6 is one of them.


Domestic

Snug elastic, the afternoon chafes.
Those hours between three and six
when the radio plays nothing but jazz
and you’re stuck inside a fire tower all day,
peeing in a jar. What you’d hoped to do
won’t get done, but it’s too early to give up
trying. In German, there’s a word for
men who iron their underwear,
but you’ve long since forgotten it.
Few things are certain: without floss
all roads lead to gingivitis. Most people cheat
at crossword puzzles. Cotton shrinks.

The latest rash of babies turning up
in dumpsters has hit the city news
and made me sick again. I am losing patience
with these women who can’t take the child
to a church hospital fire station or
just an old fashioned basket at a neighbors’
door. What’s wrong with this mess that

it’s being repeated over and over
while the anchorwoman reports—Baby Doe
found yesterday is still in serious condition
but is expected to make it.—Make what?
A happy holiday in some foster home
that won’t mind if the plastic bags cut off
oxygen and hope from a new brain needing

to find a way out of the trash,
some kind of receiving blanket besides
old newspapers and banana peels?
I’m trying to keep my compassion up,

trying to imagine the vacant logic that
even for a moment though it was a good idea
to treat some little person who had so
recently emerged as garbage.

hangover


the weekend is nearly asleep
but in the fissures of monday morning --
seven-minute snooze between alarms,
a red light, empty coffee cup --
you can still find heat stored
on your skin, garden under your nails
and gripped in the folds of your mind

you wither at the thought of socks,
the plot of office, you sit at your desk but can't
open the door to your work -- a key
broken off, your brain snagged
on sunday, memories of sunshine
barging in like dandelions in the lawn

by now the storm you're watching will have breached
the screens, all the windows in the house
left up, leftover from a time before rain
was born, just yesterday there weren't clouds,
the only grey found in the shade of elms,
chest feathers of sparrows, uprooted worms

you spend the day pinching your blisters,
your patch of sunburn, trying to hold
at the surface the person you are
in barefeet, under a blue sky

Tell-a-phone

Not my number though, a relative's.


pansies


arthritic old men
hunched in white plastic chairs, their eyes
squinted, too many years
smoking

heat, watching
days go by

I’d given up on her arrival when dusk
fell in the slow-motion way of May,
sun digging it’s heels in to slow it’s descent
wanting to stay up for a glass of water,
but I was able to rise from my reading
and head out for some weeding, once
help arrived. We tackled the ring around
the tulip poplar, pulling wild strawberries
from the grass pie and tossing roots like
centipedes with hundred of hair legs
flinging composted blackness into the
coffee night air dripping around us.
Dirt climbed under our nails and gave
us honest hands, no denying the work
we were brewing, passing time, ripping
roots, flinging rhythmically to the
noise of night bugs—none biting by some
magic of weeding fury that wrapped us
in our devotion, our kneeling in dirt,
our preparation for flats of color
coming to adorn this place of communion
between growing things with hands and those
without, wormy things blessing the ground
before heading back to their work, lady bugs
flying home to eat aphids and kiss rosebuds.
Two hours we weeded and never once felt the sting
of anything besides the bite to get things planted.

toofer won

pardon the long-weekend backlog... here's two day's worth of poems, which makes us square. not that anyone's counting.

*
heliotropes


we fall through a sunlit crack
in the afternoon, four of us gathered
in a sling of oak and poplar,
a warm, green lobe pinched off
by the assiniboine

tree roots knit a nest
the depth of a sunday hour,
of sitting and breathing,
eating fruit and almonds

a pale, overgrown species
of woodland sunflowers, we track
the sun with our faces, unable
to untangle ourselves
from the young ferns, lift
our roots from the moss
and walk back to the car


*
slake


leonard cohen is lounging
on my verandah, the flat
of a glass of wine pressed
to his chest, waiting for me
to finish the weeding

i open the screen door,
remove his jacket,
slip my fingers between
his pages and let the words slide
down my throat

escape

Apologies, I've been away from the boards preparing an application for a screenwriting program. Lots of words but none of them here!

Taking the inspiration, here is a phone poem (# is family friends from my youth)

Escape

Wasn't always like this
I was young once like you
But things change
Life goes quickly on
Though we beg it to throw on the brakes
Barring that, jump
from grey vans hurtling down the highway

Polishing silver earrings I recall
women who gave them to me
over years quivering like a heat mirage
barely visible at this distance.
No precious stones or gold,
no fortunes spent to please a magpie.
I have always been content

with silver in inventive shapes,
just silver that requires attention.
Touch it with the hands
remove the tarnish with
tiny rubbed circles.
Use a special cloth, so old
and full of tarnish smudge—

minuscule molecules of spent silver,
exposed to air and darkened
silently when I wasn’t looking
not paying attention.

I look for the women in the cloth—

but they are smudges in history
left to darken or die
or fade from the brilliance
that sent silver my way,

then lost it’s luster when
I wasn’t paying attention.

Some haiku

snapdragons

are bullies in bed
prefer to rest in warmed sheets
pretend to be gods


snapdragons

velvet rainbow tubes
attract more than their fair share
of snipped attention


snapdragons

despise crowds and break
suspenders of green-eyed thumbs
crushed under pressure

We got to market late again
arriving with no time to spare.
Some farmers were already gone
back to henhouses and spinach rows.
Some stalls were bare plywood
embarrassingly nude of food.

So we had to buy eggs from a skinny
cackling woman hawking next
to the grizzled onion seller
with a bad comb-over,
who may be her father or brother
but finally got a haircut, thank goodness.

While we stood waiting, the round women
next to me took every
last one of the red bell peppers—
two fat bags of waxed crimson
trucked in from Florida this time of year—
so I took a basket of what looked like
badly treated Christmas ornaments,
shades of green and yellow
not even coming close to red.

The ladies in the spice shop hobbled
back and forth behind the counter
on swollen feet –
the end of shift approaching—
carrying their smiles above weary bodies,
yet remember what we like
and apologize for being out
a certain sausage they make.
Come back next week, we’ll have more.

The baker’s wife had rolls half price,
our thin reward for coming late,
but warns us, all the booths
with local strawberries sold out
already, so sorry, they were so sweet.

As we made our way dodging
the dwindling crowd,
two cotton mesh bags expanded
to hold abundant bunches of broccoli—
three heads for a dollar, lady,
take ‘em off my hands, lady—
so we waddled out of the market
like packed mules sagging
under the weight of our own provisions.

night walk

you don't ask what time it is
when i say i can't sleep
just come straight from a dream
and tell me you like to walk
across empty parking lots
with your eyes closed, measuring
the length of your comfort in the dark

like holding your breath or a flame
to your palm, surveying the territory
of your conviction, your capacity
to travel the underside of the familiar

i try wandering blindly
through the bed, but
even with you as my landmark, i can't
help opening my eyes, checking
my position in relation to the clock

The things with wings are flying in
like shadows that you hear,
a speck so fast it was not seen
as I read in the room.

The only proof one came at all is
memory of the thud
against the glass closed to the sky.
It must have looked bird-open.

How could a little fledgling know
the air would be so hard,
the exit blocked—

then nothing?

I did look up and nothing saw.
I went back to my book.

Who was more startled when it woke
among the potted plants
and tumbled to the table’s edge
to find the floor so far?
A tiny swoop to land upon
the carpet by the books
piled high like shrubs to hide among,
so why not have adventure?
It would not fly from room to room
But chose to hop around.

A mouse brown bird and just
as small, with pale yellow shoulders
made my chest jump with each
new hop, while thinking,
“Where’s the cat?”

I followed with a towel to throw—
on good advice from friends—
but young is faster than these bones

and makes a good escape.

When I gave up to read awhile
and form some strategy,
the cat came home and fetched the bird
from underneath a bed—

in it’s dark jaws so full of teeth
I knew the bird was dead.

I grabbed the cat by her neck’s nape
and being full,
she dropped her toy.

I braced myself with tissued hand
and knelt to scoop the body,
when off it hopped and threw me back
with a mild coronary.

The little devil, sly and slight
stood posing in the hall
while I removed the peevish cat
and closed the open doors.
I found a basket small enough
And threw it like a trap
to port the youngster back outside
to play in the azaleas.

The cat is back upon my lap.
She thinks we had a party.
No doubt at all,
the screens go on
first thing in the morning.

bleeding hearts

hibernate an ongoing ache in narrowly ground chambers, measure
grief in seasons, find the sum of every year is carried over, wintered beds
subtracted in eager homecomings, and the previous year’s obsession
reduced to memory by a quick, pointed romance, their own movement
manic: love and the newly multiplied reason for existence—every year
they rise to the challenge, collapse once more in sweet palmed
longing, a summer crush of pink and green lives turned, the heart
upside down, and the center of each swollen self, falling

night vision


you can't batten down your eyelids,
can't lace the lashes tonight
wriggling from the palm of the pillow,
your mind won't be pinned

you roll around the bed like an idea
refusing to take root, a loose key
a scrappy stray wandering,
sniffing for sympathy

it takes all night to count the breaths
of the house, to watch the clock drag its hands
nothing will still long enough
for you to tie a knot in the day

a robin, a white-throated sparrow conspire,
pry open the window, slide
their voices over the sill and you try
again to make eye contact with sleep

When I'm 64

Chestnuts bloom pink and white, candy-stripers
outside the old folks home. It’s talent night;

some cheery voice sings despite the shabby chairs
and poor attendance. Walkers and wheelchairs

count the parts replaced, clock
the warranty on what’s left

while I slow-shuffle the block,
pause outside the iron-wrought to listen.

Almost thirty and another hour lost
to the piston of negative self-talk.

I don’t look at people as they pass.
The piano is all raised eyebrows, high notes.

In the courtyard, some fool’s planted tomatoes
certain the danger of frost has passed.

---

Okay, a late night post, but here it is. I'm off to the island for the long weekend; I'll be without internet access till Tuesday. I look forward to reading your weekend posts then. Thanks so much for the encouragement this week. It was a struggle sometimes.

This is the time of the biting bugs
the time when screens should go up,
doors should not be left wide open,
and attention should be paid
when wandering at dusk to view stars.
This is the time when slight flutters
on the arm may bite in the next breath,
before you can wipe it away,
before you realize it’s not just wind
moving tiny hairs against tan skin.
This is the time when day is slightly darkened,
metallic webbing stretched over glass,
light sacrificed for safety, the simple safety
netting provides some sleepers in Africa,
some lucky enough to own it.
This is the time when I remember
the treasure of walls and floors
and beds and screens and all the things
that divide our children from the death
waiting in a silent bite.

just a little untitled lunch-hour dealie from me today...

you've waited too long
to shore up your mind,
correct your spine,
you've been eroded
by the small winged worries
that live on blood,
use your energy and patience
to make their little nests

you are brittle now,
always holding a glass
of milk, hiding small nicks
on your skin
with styptic fingertips

you sit and bite
at the air, arms too worn
to wave away gnats
no one else can see

When words roll through my head
like cattle through a dusty trail
in a distant canyon land
I can almost hear the calling back and forth
the insistent moaning as they travel
on their way to slaughter
hesitant to arrive anywhere
and so plod on at their own pace
herded with great difficulty
from one point to another.
A snake’s rattle or telephone ring
can send them all stampeding.

just like


you're just like leonard cohen,
the way you bring my groceries in,
though you lack the old man cap,
the dark slant, the manners

but you do him better,
pushing the cart and paying the bill,
stacking the cans of beans in the cupboard,
balancing the avacado and tomatoes

you'll never sing my name,
won't make me into a poem,
but you kiss me in the dairy aisle
like he would, like it's the only item on the list

Peacekeeping

An army of stench,
the marigold stands
planted at attention.
Half camouflaged
in green fatigues,
they salute each other
from end to end.
Always an edgy
operation, they’re
the garden’s best
defense— soldiers
and leaves as artillery.
Marigolds hold
front lines, borders,
and beds, fight
for petaline rights
in mud trenches.
They wear their
orange permed dos
in undone helmets,
alert folks at the back
with surveillance,
watch for the multi-legged
drone of the enemy,
fast conduct of bees
active air conflict,
or a probing cat
who squats, dropping
his dirty bomb
one foot away.

Between midnight and one am

I realize I’ve left my laundry in the dryer,
forgot to buy cereal, someone’s
pawed through my day fourteen underwear
and there’s nothing for breakfast.
The day’s spent, but still
I check email, cruise MLS. Scrutinize
my face with a magnifying mirror. Worry
about the groceries I bought on overdraft,
how the bank dings me two dollars
every time I dip into the red.
Body sacked over the chair, I’m unwilling
to usher myself the few steps to bed,
so I type long overdue replies with one hand
till something gives–the clock punched,
I collapse, having earned my seven hour leave.

The candle scent is Sunflower—
meaningless unless you’re into
marketing—
but stale
smoke in the office fades
under the influence
of the small flame
hotly luminating

cut glass walls, a votive
holder too expensive-looking
to be bought by me,
yet
I can’t think of
who would give such a gift
and why to me?
After so
many continuous days of rain
even the suggestion of sun
is the real gift.

taking off


let's wake up early and like robins --
singing, primed to fly

we'll light the laughter of the floorboards
before the sun even knuckles
sleep out of its eyes

pull the plug on the alarm,
on time itself, and obligations

punch t-shirts into a backpack,
let our jobs go like a handful of dandelion seeds

we'll slip out of the grid of days
and lists, the measure of property lines

and stretch

wave to the stunned stucco face
and tell the garden to stand up for itself

Game

At least you’re not raging anymore she says
well into their third pint, as they sit on the patio
trading divorce stories.
Maybe it’s their age, maybe it’s ours,
but I don’t want to be like them,
having just become comfortable with small silences
across the table, as we play scrabble, wanting
the possibility of a close score, a perfect ending,
not some hundred point gap. A year and a half later
and I’m feeling better about it she says
though I still have that impulse to google
him late at night. Sometimes I forget
what it’s like, curled around anger so hot and fast,
picking the scab open again. How could I
and still walk down the street
arms linked with another woman
convinced this time, we’d play it right.




---
Okay, I give up for today. I'm hot and cranky and nothing better is going to come.

Temp gig

By what perversion
of fate
am I editing
wedding videos?

chopping happy moments
into bits
dicing couples'
cute memories
of how they met
and all they expect
from each other
synching the sound
so their stories
sound right

I never meant to
become bitter
or return to
the cynicism
that served my
teen years so well
even before
I'd ever kissed
a boy
or known
what true pain
really was

but here I am muttering
don't believe him
sweetheart
oh god, it'll never work
big weddings can't buy
happiness --
nothing can

And I may be right
but who am I
to fast forward?
Got to just
let them
play it out
slow motion
soft light
kind cuts

In the gray hour before the rain came again,
we found some daylilies, clear lemon yellow,
a small clump hiding behind paving stones
and baby boulders, waiting to be recognized
as one of the special applicants for adoption.
Nearly missed as it lay beaten flat by
this morning’s downpour a single flower
waved on it’s thin stalk, a tiny hand of petals
drawing attention to itself. Only when
I lifted it with a clump of dark
damp dirt did I spy the pair of buds
on the same stalk, baby buds waiting
to unfold like sunshine in the new bed
not far away after a nap and dreams.
Tucking the still sleeping lilies into place,
I sang a lullaby and shushed the baby buds,
letting the afternoon rain continue the melody.

Seven months: the eldest, after...

You turn changeling even before you are born
tugging me into midnight lands where I wear out slippers
two-stepping down the hall in the dark of this body
to empty a bladder hardly big enough for a princess’ pea

When I return to bed touching the mound of mattress
pillows and slung limbs my careful buttressing of your burrow in me
my old soldier wakes the night closing at my heels
and opens the hoary hill of his arms opens them wide

upstairs there's a door


upstairs there's a door
we've never opened,
a room that sleeps
comfortably above us --
such a quiet, shy idea
we keep forgetting
it's an option, a space
we could move into

finding the painted hinges
behind the desk is like falling
for the same magic
over and over: surprise
and then, surprise

i poke my mind inside,
find a collection
of priceless words we might like
to use, jam jars of laughter,
a fortune in time,
but it's not enough to risk
the disappointment of stale
newspapers, empty bottles

i burrow my finger through the ring
that once held the lock,
but i can't taste any difference
in the air on my hands

so i sweep around it,
carefully polishing, but never
lifting, the latch

What’s in a name

Always a celebrity, the rose knows
any other name is her own, understands
she’s the heart of any bouquet—
sells herself by the dozen.

The rose is infectious, the germ
of specialization trafficked in vine and bush.
Public property, she’s a test-tube donor,
mother to generations of herself, a dynasty

tracked back to simple four-petalled features
pressed into service; humbled beginnings
lost in the rapid rise to fame. But her conceit
is only a cover, an occasion to hide fears

of mortality, disease, and customs of flowers.
The rose’s popularity is infinite yet
she remains a loner; her pointed personality
eventually prickles others the wrong way.

Buy and Sell

More than a to b, an old car is a stand-in
for desire, thwarted and otherwise. Backseat intimacy
of buckles and belts, hot vinyl. Steering wheel sticky
with sugar and grease. Every groove catalogued,
every rock that’s ever pocked the windshield, split
a headlight on the logging road to Kennedy Lake.
Fingers crossed, never knowing when the tranny will go,
but that it will, and soon. Such a fierce and tenacious love
that inevitably lets us down, on the side of the road
changing a tire, or waiting for a tow truck at midnight,
the alternator shot. Last straw in a lengthy list
of hard-to-find parts.

So you give in to the sell
but it’s just a bunch of tire kickers
with minor interest, who talk mileage and rust,
don’t care for the particulars of habit, the slight pull to the left
or the wind-shimmy on a straight stretch;
they raise eyebrows at your nicknames.
So you wait it out for the person who tilts their head
at your travelogues. Take a couple hundred less to know
she’ll be treated right; you can hand over
without worry she’ll end up a junker for parts,
least not yet, surely she’s got a few good years left.

A Hug

Passing through the same room
on the way to some chore
some undone bit of work
waiting patiently for its turn
we bump past, cloth touching,
almost moving on,
but stop and swivel without thinking
into the arms of each other
old friends for decades still seeking
the scent behind our ears
below the hairline
right above the neck
burrowing into the collar
holding the flavor of the day
and the smelling faintly
what we must remember from
nursing as newborns
some sweetness that means
we are loved and will be safe
and never alone again.

propulsion


a puddle of sunlight falls in front of you
and you try to get your toe on it,
hold it down, but it shuffles two steps
ahead, and when you reach it, two more,
like an answer lifted by the wind
that you follow into traffic
but never find again

fine gravel fills the gap
in your mind -- you are automatic,
only reflex, responding to the river path

you run past the end of your breath,
beyond the length of your muscles,
powered only by the scent
of an idea you had
when you laced up your shoes
but lost on the trail --
something about hunger, maybe,
or pursuit -- you chase the source,
the thought that casts
this shadow you can't break through

Six months: sound slide

The midnight hammer of new siding come loose
banging against hundred year-old planks
the lashing of limbs the heartbeat burp thrash under my skin
his cocked ear the luscious feel of the orange
whose peel has pulled away from my bite mark
the golden light of late afternoon
bouncing from window to window
and never quite making it down to the street
the stalagmite of ice and sand
that hangs from the wheel well of the car
and kicked one two three taps falls under the tires
like the sudden but total calving of an iceberg
the salt blooms the tight skin of each moony phase
his hand on my leg as we circle the block
the heater struggling
the car pinging and knocking in the cold
how I’ve started to grunt when I lever myself out of the bath

There is a nervous hum outside,
the night noise bent on filling
the black space waiting for morning.
Even a full moon hides silent
behind solid tar clouds,
clouds too dense for even a hint
of lunar light to glow through.
The low hum stays steady,
an insistent emergency broadcast,
cellular vibrations of voiceless things
growing into a million shapes –
the formless hum continues
becoming larger than any leaf.
The peculiar weather swirls cold air
backwards, descending from the north,
heading west, spinning cold from the north ,
humming as it works its not-quite-freezing way
down, directing air currents wide as giant rivers
overhead, cold falling like the chill
from the open door of a giant refrigerator
with a burnt out bulb, no clue to it’s contents,
humming its old motor, barely allowing a thaw.
The hum seems louder than it is, just vibrating
chattering teeth, using the jawbone
as a sounding board. This hum
vibrates the trees and ground beneath
gardens and houses, all waiting for the
overdue breath of warmth.

A haibun

...because a serious (?) form is still something I think the flowers need, I decided to try something a little different and yet something lyrical that might enhance the bouquet. I'm not sure if it is working; I was troubled trying to produce "a happening" in the prose part of the haibun. My reasoning for this poem is a non-happening is as much a happening as something is happening. (I sort of pilfered the title from a book review, not quite the same, but VERY similar).


Why I’m not a lilac


Every day my north-facing window is a barometer of time, an aging reflection; I drink earl grey while watching the state of the season out the kitchen window, this time spring, the yard in a phoney flux of puberty. I gaze through double-paned glass at the lilacs, a profession of limbs budded like cosmetic surgery, the potential of purpled parcels, the ruse of branches— each one so old and prim they barely bend with the wind, those lavender coiffed buns bound by brown stick-pins rapidly popping from bee-hived dos. The flowers are forms held wisely in place, no closer to opening than an eruption of lava from prairie earth. But appearances are deceptive— lilacs are the poster gals of decorum, have silently slept their way to the top, spent years rooted in affairs, apple-blossoming under eyes and bruised lives gossiped by sparrows and I, each bud a curiosity trained tightly on the yard



memory is pinch-
lipped, stiffens with age—
lilac-petals pulled

gulls

there are a hundred gulls
or a million -- we place bets
that will never pay --
the air saturated with sound,
voices thrown, impossible to count

we can hear only the gulls,
can only hear them:
the constant cheering
of a hometown crowd,
an unseen arena,
deep in the secrecy of the marsh

even hunched in wind and age
last year's grasses are tall gawkers
that fence off the game, rustling
brittle pennants above our heads

we can only imagine the plays --
the dives and saves, the taunts
and dekes -- as we watch the defeated
rounding slow, silent laps in the clouds

Slumber party

Slumber Party

Bouquets of peonies are overnighting
in my home, houseguests
in shades of pink-tipped white,
some sporting big winey heads.
Others are balls of pale innocence
hiding smears of red
in random places
like butcher’s children

unaware of what’s been cut.
Fragile balls of petals fluttering
in open windowed rooms,
the odd crowd overflows
from blue glass vases,
a small collection.
The yellow Fiesta pitcher
and one burgundy clay vessel
were pressed into service
for their spacious accommodations.

Canning jars
show linear
green stems
in still water,
vertical reminders
of the rootless state
my blooming friends
find themselves experiencing.

Tonight I can only
offer them another drink
and lie about the prognosis.

I won’t know their names
‘til I find books with their pictures –

too late I fear,
to share with my nodding quests—

all handsome
as Marie Antoinette
before that cake remark.

sleeping habits

i watch you poke at sleep
with your toe, then begin
a slow wade -- half an hour
later it only laps at your ankles

you're still, curled into a snail shell
but sleep gathers then recedes
according to the moon
through our window,
the currents of your mind

inching in, twitching each step,
it is a slow process --
swimming lessons for someone
who has known drowning

chest deep, the cusp
of sleep, you prepare to dive

your breath hardens, explodes
through your nose the way
it does when you laugh
with your mouth closed,
your belly kicks out

i used to ask you what was funny,
bringing you to the surface
every time, but now i wait
for you to finish paddling,
for the folds of your mind to loosen

soon your body forgets me,
my hand on your chest,
and sleep is so far over
your head you breathe dreams
and float

Anti-aging

I'm aging
ungracefully,
ungratefully.

Others claim
amazement
that I look so young,
a backhanded compliment
if ever I heard one.

But I know my
face more intimately.

That red spot
on my nose
is new
this year.
That little bump above my
right cheek
I expected to fade
never has.

I yank white hairs
unmercifully,
pretending it's a
manageable job,
though they have
moved from isolated
incidents to a crop
that grows more
plentiful each season.

The lines
beneath my eyes
multiply monthly
and I suppose
I should take solace
most of them are
born from laughter

but it hasn't helped
that I've spent
years squinting
trying to see things
farther away
than I was meant to.

But seriously,
how can I be expected
to accept the idea
of myself as sage-ing when
I still get zits
and crushes
and am
still taken
suprise by
my period?

I still hate fish
and black olives.
I still fear
the laughter
of teenage girls.

I still dream
of boys out of reach
and exams I'm late for.

I've never conquered
impatience or sitting still,
size six jeans
or the lack of desire
to have children.

I still lose myself
in romance novels
and prefer
19th century insights
to our own
post-modern angst.

But three fears I've overcome:
being alone
living without love
and missing out on
that which I was Meant to Do.

sigh. i have on-going computer issues at home. this is yesterday's poem. back to default settings. this still feels very drafty to me... i'm having issues with structure and transitions...


body search

we look one another over
for woodticks, check freckles,
poke moles to know
which flaws belong, are built
into the skin

at your temple i find one
white hair, the single poplar
in a stand of cedar and pine,
and show you mine --
spokes of a spider web
spreading over darkness

where eyes can't reach
we roam with fingers, feeling
for small worries
that crawl and root

i follow the brook of your spine
with my hands, trace a rivulet
of sweat and discover
a shallow basin that receives
my fingers, boots in creekmud

we put away the matches
but keep up the search with lips

on the back of your neck
i come across my own handwriting,
tinged with woodsmoke, the pages
i gave you from my notebook,
words that got the fire going

I know better than to watch the news,
wrapped in the quilted distance
between where I sit
and where roadside hells
explode sitting soldiers into bits –

primetime statistics, thrown
through satellite waves –

or whatever communication
miracle brings this crap

packaged between commercials
for local car dealerships
and fast foods’ latest offering
of some manly feast on a bun,
too slick not to swallow,
right before the weather and sports.

I know better than to sit and hear
the numbers dead, casualties –
somehow ours more
than those not in uniform –

thumping against my quilted chest,
soft and silent as bodies of dead robins
thrown at my body
for no apparent reason.

Improvements

While you are not here, I improve
the house. I hang pictures, I fix
the creaky door's creak, I manage
to install a garbage disposal. Our bed: new sheets.
The living room: new lamps, a series of
shadowboxes which hold many
meaningful photographs featuring people
who love us and are loved. The upstairs
bathroom: shelves and a mirror,
which reflects my harried hair
and my lonely eyes. I cut the lawn, I weed
the garden, I plant ten begonias down
the side of the house. I pull up the carpet
in the basement. On Friday
I move all the furniture around,
in the hopes that it will stop reminding me
that you are not here to use it.

You will not recognise things when
you return, you will be amazed, you will
see with new eyes all the places
you took for granted and realise how much
you missed them, how beautiful they are
now, how much you want to know them
again. You will love it.

Stutter

Some days all you can do is put the rice on,
trust the rest will come, lace your running shoes
just twenty minutes, just. Push yourself through
with a stopwatch. Some days you’ll coax
fear out the window with nothing but a wooden spoon
and some honey, the wasp slow to take
and you wanting to hit it as hard as you can
to stop the live radio feed in your head--
the voice that says I’ve lost a few pounds,
my pants fit again, that’s something,
but the next cheque’s already spent, can’t
even brown bag it on my front porch, every penny’s flipped,
job boards the new pack-a-day habit–-
your arm swings back, your face twists,
but something in you asks to be merciful.
So it continues.
The wasp stutters against the glass.

I'm retiring

from couplets for awhile. Actually, I simply tire of them. I will think of some other form in which to place my bouquet.



Pick and Gogh


The sunflower is a victim
of her own success—

shades of the girl next door,
once good looks and sunny

dispositions preserved her
role in the spotlight.

Now she’s clichéd,
the wasted model in mass

produced t-shirts and towels
a multiple personality—

the sunflower scrabbles through days
turgid in suburban portraits,

loses sight of the path, movement
of the sun. Follows instead

plots sown, unseeded in the core
of her being, beliefs shed

black-eyed weathering, the future
pecked clean by posturing.

one of my goals with this mayday project was to use the opportunity to experiment, but i've been finding myself sticking to my same old, mouldy habits. (with the pressure of a poem a day, i've been reverting to doing what i know and am comfy with.) today i'm trying out a found poem (never done this before... not even sure how to do this) because i just couldn't resist the gems contained within the preface to my thesaurus, circa 1962, which i borrowed from my Dad when I was writing a high school essay and never returned. here i've edited down some the selling features -- removed only context and a few words here and there. is that what a found poem is?

what this book can do for you

it offers you immediate,
practical and invaluable assistance
whenever you are in trouble
with a few quick synonyms
for a word you have been over using

you feel that your language lacks
freshness or vigor, your ideas
drab, weak, vague or overly general

laboring over phraseology,
you desperately search
the recesses of your own mind
before you start
tracking down a word,
one particular word
that will most successfully convey
the subtle shading of emotion
you wish to get across to him

Creature Comforts

Sump pump serenades me
like a fat cat, purring
in the basement, all slurpy
with the water seeping in
the cracks,

such fragile foundations,
moist hairlines seeping,
keeping the spring soup soil
outside the place,
keeping us dry and content

aware of how important
a roof over our head
really is,

no matter
how flowers quiver
in the skywatering or
splay their luscious leaves
heavy against grass
gorging in the dark,

all the rooty things
sucking up the wet
catching what they can
letting only ribbons
of irregular rain
run past, percolating

through saturated soil,
ribbons of river
thin as mouse tails
enter and triggers the purring,
the float in the bucket
a worn toy, bobbing.

fence lines

The bison huffs all dark woolly head
hump and hindquarters
then lowers himself into the ditch
its banks of spring gumbo funk already hoof-split
already baked hard

The bison locks his thin front legs
considers the sun-shot wings of mites
the foot-waggling wallow of a cow
her dark mufflers and trailing streamers of winter fur
upheaving
cloven hooves up and down
the dry mud lifting and clouding around her

The bison dips his chin
into reflections of last year
sucks and strains green bleached blonde
garrump gone to spawn
lifts it streaming to the calf
all pulled caramel all legs and on pointe hops
takes his biting attendants his airspace of geese growl
and gull scream of overhead airplane
and peripheral auto drone
and moves off

Hands

Blind shackled creatures we so often ball, fist,
harnessed to our daily tasks,
they’re the poster child for repetitive stress,

all that verbing. Sensitivity burnt off their tips;
testing the bath water
always gives an inaccurate reading. Better to use

the ankles, elbows, or wrists. And yet when it rains,
our first gesture is to hold
them up to be pin-pricked. So rarely do we lay them flat,

praise their ability to touch. Lifelines cracked with dry skin,
every tool they grasp
is only an extension of the hand, a poor copy.


----
I'm strugggling with this one. I thought putting it in a pretty form
(aka Stephen Dunn) would help, but I'm not sure. Is it too "poetic"?
Am I a prisoner to sound? Is something missing? Do I need to explode it
and write more before tightening again? Thoughts?

Dandy Lions

Inspired by Tracy's meditation on dandelions the other day.

We grasp
yellowing stalks
and blow
our wishes
sky high

content to
pay the price
for this cosmic lottery
later
when our wishes become weeds
to be cursed, despised
and destroyed

divine retribution
perverse, unfair
for have we not waited
to yank these ghostly
genies from
the living ground
until they are
giving their
dying gasps?

have we not
helped them
fulfill their
botanic genetic destiny?

Behind in everything from bills to dishes,
plants still sitting in their plastic trays
losing patience with me as I say,
Not today, but soon. They know I lie.

I am becoming one of those people
who will have to make up stories
to entertain the creditors, to get them
to offer quick pay by phone, the easy way

to get their money, which I have, and
me to get some sleep, which is becoming
more and more a test of tossing
without waking my loved one,

who does not guess how the bank balance
is a poor reflection of how I tend
the family finances when I am absorbed
with every other detail I concoct.

The plants are lucky there is rain,
but other chores need attention
before the whole thing gets out of hand.

synthesis? or just a new word for cowardice

taurus terror
autre hauteur

|workplace bullies|
it said on the tv screen
with closed captioning
in the learning commons

abilitybelittled
bullyidiot

this unquantifiable effect.
micro-objectified

embattlement
with a side of belittlement (as in beef)
where the marginalized
by the wrongly strong
belong.

who's the flawedlogical bully
who's the idiot whose deeds are
at the behest of the beast

are glimpses of the human inside
enough to keep playing along?

you can't beat the vestigial salvajuices
out of the postmasochristic idiot
raised as he was
by offending commands

agency pairs with patiency
courtesy of
|Polarity, Dialectic & Organicity|

bullyidiot
abilitybelittled

mcgillivray falls

this afternoon we drank water
from bottles, ate apples
cleaned on our sleeves and
tracked an eagle
along a creekbed as it stitched
trees to trees either side
of the narrow stream

we paused to watch the water
fall away -- constant froth
like thick new moss
on the rock -- and lost our way
of telling the white head
and tail from the pale poplars

we were the first to leave
our fingerprints, this season,
on the fine branches
that crowd the path,
the trail littered --
used spruce needles, cedar
scraps, crumpled pages of birch

miles from monday, hours
from a calendar,
we could have believed
in being remote,
but the far off trucks
on the highway were flies
that don't bite, just insist
on your ears

Road Work

Ringside, I watch as dump trucks lumber
up my street, avalanche dirt
from their humped backs. Workers
emerge from underground bunkers,
in their reflective orange spacesuits,
to lunch in the loose gravel, juggle
coffee cups and wrappers into the gutter.
Traffic re-directed through a slalom
of orange pylons and signs No stopping,
Detour, sewer pipes’ cement lengths
lie shrink-wrapped and bundled
on the sidewalk. Dormant. Walking home
I pass giant eggcups, mixers, remnants
of the day’s work crusting the edges, spare sets
of backhoes’ teeth, sawdust and fresh stumps.
The choked bark of each remaining oak.
Wonder what roots are left among
the labyrinth of pipes and cement,
where I once thought, foolishly,
there was solid earth.

3 Cinquains and another Somethin'

Hrm, been having Blogger issues, but here are some recent efforts:


3 Cinquains

Bed
soft ours
holding joining forgetting
we aren't supposed to
Rewind


Icecream
sweet luxury
dip lick consume
in my forbidden pleasure
Sugar


Bike
forlorn abandoned
standing waiting forgiving
rain caresses dirty wheels
Rust

=========================
And from Sunday...


Editing
that which will not be edited
History
all that has passed
Story
what is to come
Cutting
that which is irrelevant
Pasting
together things that were
never supposed to touch
Compressing
years into minutes
Images
what never was and never will be
Yet
through the power of
Creation
Is

Eight months: the peanut gallery

How’s the morning sickness?
Is it…a good thing?

Do you know if it’s a boy or a girl?
Or do you know and you’re not going to tell me?

What names do you have picked out?
Was it…planned?

You’re not going to carry that are you?
Be careful… don’t fall.

When are you due?
Don’t fall –

Oh! Can I help you with that?
Are you sure you should be…

Are you planning to breastfeed?
You are going to breastfeed, aren’t you?

Careful! (Don’t fff– )
When’s the next one coming?

* * *

Sorry for my absence over the last few days...I've been feeling VERY tired. I DO plan, however, to go back and read/re-read/memorize every poem I missed...

Three Cinquain

The inspiration was easier and harder than I thought it would be. I did two traditional and one modern. They were fun.


Yellow

A weed:
dandelion—
fear of the past rising.
Truth is fluff of our selves— lifting
each day.


Daisies

Painted ladies
trim, set, feign.
Are they happy here—
stained?



Daisies

Yellow
eyes set in white
cheeks— how sharply fate falls
gathering outcasts in grudging
bouquets.

Sidewalk Pause

Waiting for the rain that may not come
next door to the reading that starts later
some young woman singing on the speakers
adds lyrics to the rush hour rhythms.
The cost of coffee gets me a seat
and floor show, sparrows hopping
in bagel crumbs, snatching supper .
Here at the corner cluster of cafes
bookstores and over-priced antiques
I see the city trees turn leaves
light side up, plant prayers for rain,
cupping veins to catch what water falls,
but only if the clouds slow down—
running so high and fast—
past brickwork facades and overhead wires,
parking places for assorted birds
not ready to settle into their nests
just yet. They must be waiting for
the maybe rain, a quick drink
before heading home to sing
their own city sky verses.

5/8/06

telling

i know by touch
the scar that darts
across your cheek,
i've learned it with my lips,
but i can't remember
what childhood play
cracked your face

open the wine and tell me
again, i've known your stories
so long i've forgotten them

tell me how you taught yourself
to ride a bike, how you met me
and in between

skip the history that lives
with us -- your world halved
so early and the wound still ugly,
slow in healing and always asleep
somewhere in the house

i want to know you over again,
your birthmarks and first loves,
lost toys and late nights

empty the bottle into these two
slim-lipped mouths, round
with thirst, but patient

Instinct

North wind peeling whitecaps, late afternoon sun–
February makes vacationers of us
after a record slog of rain. Our dog quivers
at the ocean’s edge eying a stick bobbing just out of reach,
but it’s stay and leave it, we don’t want wet car seats
so we toss upwind, admire each speckled oval
at our feet. Each rock asks to be palmed, pocketed
while our framed prints gather dust.
No critics on the beach to say what is and isn’t
art, save ourselves. Driftwood figures
emerge from knotholes, a southwestern
cattle skull, a seal’s head, each shape
mouthed by canine jaws seconds
after we lay it down.
Hair in our eyes, sand-hijacked cuffs
we huck a few choice heavyweights into the salt,
whoop and holler at the splash like six year olds,
at the backlash of tide, thinking for a second
we caused it. Cry out when too late–
our dog goes barreling into the surf.

weeding

I exercise my dominant mammal rights
on this small piece of land between the house
and the sidewalk. The plants here
are mine, to do with as I will. Trowel in hand,
I commit genocide on yarrow, povertyweed,
the never-defeated armies of dandelions.
I dig deep, going for the roots, I understand,
as conquerers must, that the most important defeat
must happen underground, that the smallest defiant shred
can raise an army again, that a nation
of nodding peonies cannot live in the shadow
of purple loosestrife.

The Iris Liberation Front

We marched with our horticultural artillery,
spades at the ready, clever hand tools
made for lifting things to freedom—
unidentified rhizomes barely visible
beneath a crust of dappled dirt.

We stab and dig and lift
beneath the sword-shaped leaves
cut down by the developer’s
hired mowers, oblivious
to Ruby’s years of care.

We imagine the missing blooms
the spring palette of colors
unfolding in old fashioned
unnamed strains, mingled over time
and waiting for their rescue.

We parade the stolen flowers back
in my rusty red wagon, destined
to carry moss rose one more summer,
this mission the most it’s ever traveled,
carrying the iris to new soil.

a sunday buncha stuff

back online! finally up and running after an internet downage since friday. i am pleased to report that despite that primo excuse to slack -- and on a gorgeous weekend, too! -- i diligently produced a poem a day. once again, these feel a little slim to me. i'm not sure if that's just what comes with not living for something very long, but i'm resolving to come back to these and give them more attention. maybe in june.

(may 5th)

estranged

you come home boiled clean,
reduced to nerves and words,
twisting in your skin to find
a fit that isn't there

you set your suitcase in the hall
and it sits zipped for days,
your watch a memento
of another timezone

your mind drifts behind, too,
a helium balloon on a string
caught too easily on everything
you've read, everyone you've met

you have a job you can't
remember, a phone number,
a grocery list and garden

you shake hands with your lover

you know it won't keep -- this state
too delicate, too impractical,
but you stay awake until you can't
knowing you'll grow back with sleep


(may 6th)

early may

tulips begin their stoop,
red heads suddenly loaded
with thoughts of summer, unbearable
for slim green spines, they slacken
with the daffodils, laughing
or sighing into the dirt

we've only just lost the snow
and already this spring is old,
grass past our ankles, weeds
dug in for the season

it's early may, our first, and
so well used we can't even find
the robin song in the evening anymore


(may 7th)

heat

you slide sideways between trees,
arms raised as if you're lifting
drinks through the crowd, green fingers
under your shirt leaving cedar
scent that will live on your skin all day
then stain the bed sheets

the sun begs you to take off
your clothes, ferns unroll
their tongues, moss softens

flies lick at your ears,
rev against lips

you aren't used to this attention,
too practical for romance and shy
as the loons watching
from the far side of the lake

but the wind wears you down, hot
and exhausted you lie on the lichen,
ants circling your thighs, and
let the sky at you