40 Weeks*

Door forced–someone dared to use a key.
No electronic trail was left. Or the motion sensor
followed the signature of empty air as though
something dead exited stage left.

Critical alarm–the ice is too warm, the frozen meat
thawing. Not global warming, no, not that–just
global hunger waiting for half-hour lunches,
catered meetings, the stress before a realization
that everything is built on widening cracks.

Duress alarm, pull stations and rabbit holes
through dense walls the colour of old oak, stained pages
of ancient documents, calm in the presence
of too little and ‘no’. After all, real performance erodes profit.


To the computer screen which long ago sucked the last
creative drops out of me, which wandered into
the ethernet, which became a trillion electrons scattered
through the umbilical chord of a million actions
and transactions–beware. One day between a dollar sign
and an em, your mind will wander like rusty railway track
through elm and cedar, maple and birch–across river
and through town and the electrical stops of 0 and 1,
will twitch, reform the universe in a way no logic could–

and you’ll dream.


*In 40 weeks, I'll be sixty and I'm going to retire. No, really.

Pogrom and the Casual Tourist


you walk from the harbour in Oslo—uphill
to the old fort which dominates your view

enter the resistence museum—snap pictures
of pictures of the past and realize Norway
also suffered—and you proceed through dungeons
vast dining rooms—canons pointing south
against the fiord’s expanding lines into darkening clouds

as you snap pictures in a meeting room—moody shots
of stained glass—nooks with statues and white plaster

the sound of boots on wood stairs warns you before
army cadets fill the room and you move to the comfort
of solid walls—realize this is what they’ll die for

three days later over Lofoten's paradise jets break
the sound barrier and for a moment
you speculate about how god's army defends Eden

City and Country Call Each Other Ghosts

Today, first time in quite a while, took the 30D to Tim Horton's and then for a ride into Mennonite land. C read her book and I stopped on back roads, thinking I saw more than just trees, fence lines, bridges across hidden streams. During the winter, so much of what one is tempted to photograph is a matter of shape. How shapes are aligned. How bleached brown grows from snow.

Bit #3

Coming from sheep/cows/dogs
we end up nowhere/yet here
in the city of workers striving for
dreams a capitalist-monger dropped
at the corner of Queen
at the feet of a whore/pimp/pusher
running concrete maze with impunity.

Like love and accessories to
the rhythms of streetcars and cabs
careening the mantra of business practice
down Bay to Front. We were never
trained to think in concrete—not
when clouds dredged days out
of the magic place.

And in the magic we court those words
we learned sitting in a fairy tale—
though here a dollar sign is the signature
for rhythm/for love/for the sun
sliding into second base across
the kitchen table—a smiling alien
signalling to the humour of his situation—

everyman in drag/waiting for dreams
in the Andromeda Galaxy to guide his life.

Twilight Man


Drinking wine while. The temperature falls and.
My skin becomes papyrus. Etched with fables.
False gods. (Snow slides down the funnels of wind and streets)

I have come to see myself. As fractals of.
Binary time. When the switch is on or off. And
a monologue of events is consumed. By opening. And closing doors.

this evening a helicopter crashed in a field between Whistle Bear Road
and Langdon Hall the scene accessible only by snowmobile two
bodies rescued from the carnage which the morning paper will reveal
to me over cereal and coffee a sacrifice to reality as I shed the twenty
thousand homages to fantasy contained in a glass of wine consumed
at the end of another week at the beginning of another year wrapped
in the continuous consumption of events strained through my need
to be deluded and diverted by the Super Bowl parade from the parade
of body bags coming from a helicopter from a fiery crash on the 401
from the believers in freedom shipped back from Afghanistan the nouveau
patriot peacekeepers in a world without peace or secure doors

I have stood in doorways. Forever. The waving man between.
Consumed by masks. Small words navigating. The eddies of
experience. Afraid to. Dance anything. My words have asked me to dance.

Holguin

The Rabbit, Remaining Perfectly Still, Is Not There

Like a stroke. Division between sunshine
pulling itself across the kitchen table.
Hand enclosing the steaming mug
of coffee. The wake behind rippling.
Distorted memory. You always strove
for hidden. Mirror in a fun house.
Nothing believable. Play-dough man.

We do not reveal.

A poem is a thousand meanings. Each true.
It doesn’t matter. Each reality is
manufactured. Like tv’s. Shattered.
Blowing bubbles which float
into shadows. Speak in five languages
at the moment that a word is placed.

I can’t help but write.

And shy away. Tie and jeans. Housecoat.
Leather jacket with obscure colours.
A breath expelled. Inhaled. Mismatched
socks. Hair in endless colours of length.
Back and forth. Words pacing back and forth.
Know me. Know me not. But the faucet
is broken. Leaks words under a cloak
of obscurity.

Write. Delete. Write. Delete.

Avoid touching
or being touched
for more than
the length
of a dangling
meaning
and a twisted
word.