Home in Time for Dinner
Sept 24 2009


They used to sell chewing gum
in the shape of cigarettes.
We couldn’t wait to smoke.

There’s that shelf
that runs the length of the back car window.
When I was little
I’d curl up to sleep there
on long road trips.
The white noise
of wind, engine, asphalt,
the sudden light
of passing cars.

We rode our bikes
from morning to night,
one gear gliders
that became motorcycles, spaceships,
in baseball caps and Keds
(which were canvas sneakers
that came in white or black
high-top, or regular.)
“Just be home for dinner”
our mothers had said,
and we were gone.

Back then, they could strap us in school —
holding-out our hands
palms up,
the sting of leather.
It was almost worth it,
a minor celebrity at recess.
Back home, we’d get our butts slapped
again —
“for good measure”, they said.
Because the teacher was always right
“and don’t you forget it.”

We ate white sliced bread
powdered milk
TV dinners,
sat around a small screen
black and white, together,
getting-up to change channels
adjust
the rabbit-ear antenna.
There were only 5
3 of which had bad static,
so we pretty much left it
as it was.



In the precarious days of our youth, when everyone smoked, no one wore seatbelts (or bike helmets), corporal punishment was OK, and we deferred to authority, we somehow managed to survive into adulthood. And not only that, but probably enjoyed life more when there was less choice (shoes and channels, for two!), but so much more freedom.

Another Poem About Fall
Sept 23 2009


The leaves change quickly, here,
a burst of crimson, orange
and then they’re gone —
a sodden brown mat,
heavy raking.

The days as quickly shrink;
and me
craving sleep, sweets,
my body still confused
by the end of summer,
winter, coming.

It’s hard to write a poem about fall;
what hasn’t been said before,
and falling leaves
is too easy a metaphor.
North of the Tropic of Cancer
north of the temperate zone,
more rock than earth
everywhere, standing water,
where even the needles soften, drop
as spruce and pine
prepare for snow.
While I grow fat
and lazy,
and frosty nights grow long.

The air, this time of year
is cool and dry,
so the sky at night seems bigger —
stars, laser-sharp,
the black void, infinite.
I become aware how thin it is,
the egg-shell atmosphere of earth;
its frugal warmth
its precious oxygen.

Looking up
through poplar, birch
— bare branches,
which seem to shiver
all through winter —
I snug-up my red wool sweater
that smells vaguely of wood-smoke
and begin to gather leaves;
still wet with dew,
shadows already lengthening.

Everything Gets Worse
Sept 22 2009


Everything gets worse
at night.
In the murky muffled quiet
of your queen-sized bed.
On sheets
you can’t remember changing,
a comforter
that’s way too hot,
the itch can drive you crazy.
The pain
that says metastases, a heart attack
some gruesome infestation.
Or grief’s
unbearable weight.
When sleep, that sweet escape
won’t take you.

If you’re alone
you think of neighbours,
eventually calling the cops
— the door locked,
the mail untouched,
the pervasive smell
of rot.

If you have company
whose name you just forgot,
you lie beside her, wondering
will she flee
or stop?

And if she’s your lover, your wife
you want to believe
she’ll hold you,
stroke your hair,
spoon your body against her
until dawn,
when the busyness keeps you from thinking,
the cold grey light
makes you small
again.

Then Saturday, you sleep all day
catching up;
the curtains
flung-open wide,
every dust-ball
illuminated.
When the monster under the bed
recoils from the light,
squeezed
into one tiny corner.

Looking Up
Sept 21 2009


When the power was cut
I stood stock-still
in sudden darkness.
But the silence
is what surprised me most —
the fluorescent buzz
the whirr of a clock
the fridge’s comforting hum,
all abruptly gone.

And then my eyes adjusted;
to the sliver of moon,
the stray light
of stars.
Nothing to do
but go outside, and walk.

As our ancestors have done
for tens of thousands of years
before the last century;
when night became glamorous
and we fought-off sleep
and felt ourselves fearless
and stopped looking up.

Until a night like this
is given to us.
When constellations crowd the sky;
and ever fainter stars
appear in bunches,
filling empty space
with light,
looking all the way back
in time.

My eyes area open wide
drinking-in the universe,
my ears
on hair-trigger alert.
And the clocks
have all stopped counting;
which feels like time is free
like permission to finally breathe.
As houses empty
the streets are filled,
politely excusing ourselves
as we gently bump into each other.
Everyone, out walking;
in wonder, looking up.

Hand-Push Mower
Sept 19 2009

“Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.” (attributed to Gustave Flaubert)


The hand-push mower
whirrs through the grass,
carving green manicured strips
clipped as close as boot camp.
The scent is succulent, sweet —
fresh-cut hay, mixed with summer day.
Sunday morning
when the dew has barely lifted.

It’s a heavy machine;
built before obsolescence,
cheap tinny knock-offs
with high-gloss paint.
The blades are elegantly curved
disappearing in an egg-beater blur
the moment it's set in motion.
The wheels are big, black, permanent,
the grips, contoured to fit my hand
smoothly,
hot, in thick leather gloves
stiff and stained with grass;
but inside, soft as a chamois.

I walk along, behind it
my pace steady, measured,
concentrating on long thin rectangles
ruler-straight edges
the margins of beds.
And the base of the chain-link fence,
where mutant weeds
send up grotesque stems
their curdled leaves.

Every two weeks, all summer
I perform this chore;
intoxicated by smell,
reassured by the well-oiled whir,
unaccountably pleased
by the even surface.

The unexpected pleasures
of the bourgeoisie.



I remembered the opening quote as “Live your life as a bourgeois, so you may seek passion and risk in your art.” Which I think may be better, even if he did say it first! Anyway, they both fit the poem. And I think it would be terribly disrespectful not to have stuck to the original.

Parallel Universe
Sept 16 2009


I’m trying to explain colour
to a blind man.
So I ask
what is the essence of blue?
Where is the synapse
that lights-up on red?
How does the vibration
of electro-magnetic waves
affect us as deeply as music
— a blue funk, a purple haze
a jaundiced expression,
the snarling black dog
of depression?

The optic nerve
fires-up the brain,
and colour occurs.
So, is that where colour resides
from the first?
Or is the brain a blank slate,
waiting for the eyes to open
and open-up the world?

He was 2, when it occurred
the accident,
and vaguely remembers looking-out
at the green beginnings of his world.
He doesn’t miss it, he says,
just curious.
“I can’t miss
what I’ve never really known.
And sound is rich enough
touch intense,
especially when I focus;
with nothing but deep dense blackness
to distract me.”

Like the vast orders of magnitude
I can’t see past.
Like the surface of things
I cannot penetrate.
Like the future
that may, or may not, happen.
And like the extra dimensions
only physicists understand,
I, too, am colour-blind —
living the conceit that I’ve mastered
a material world
my eyes can never capture;
my mind
never truly grasp.

Unseasonably Warm
Sept 14 2009


It’s desert dry
the sun high, and merciless.
The road goes by
50 feet from my door;
mostly sand, bits of gravel
spit-out like shrapnel
from passing cars.
They rumble past in a fury of dust,
usually oblivious
to the small frame house
hammered-up
in the middle of nowhere.

It’s been 2 days
looking-out, a hand shading my eyes
since I’ve seen anyone go by.
The road bakes.
Heat waves
rise-up, shimmering,
turning the stagnant air liquid
— like a parched tongue
licking dry cracked lips.

Cicadas buzz;
only the males, I’m told,
signalling their loneliness, desire
their loud abrasive fitness.
And I swear, I wouldn’t be surprised
to see a tumbleweed roll by,
out of the spruce and pine forest.
A diamondback
slither past on its silky belly,
rattler poised.
Or an armadillo
sunning on the road.

I hear voices
on the radio,
reassured I’m not alone;
that the world hasn't ended
quite yet.
For days, now
they’ve been saying rain;
but the sky stays clear, relentless.

On a rough dirt road
through a tinder forest;
way too far north
for rattlers, and sand-storms,
for bleached white bones.

In The Land of Shy Children
Sept 13 2009


I was a shy child.
Adults were pant-legs
and sensible hems,
the tops of shoes;
hands reaching down
from the high plateau of grown-ups,
permanently shrouded in cloud.

Other kids
were quick-sand,
sinking under their scrutiny
confused by their exuberance.
While solitude was freedom
in our small fenced yard —
digging dams, and earthworks,
conjuring whole cities
from dirt.

Until I was abruptly dropped
into kindergarten,
its hot-house soil
overgrown with carnivorous weeds —
giggly girls in pink,
bigger boys
loud, snatching things.
And a teacher
whose smile frightened me.
What I best recall is nap-time —
transported by daydreams;
eyelids firmly shut,
the red-tinged darkness
keeping the world at bay.

Eventually, of course
I came of age,
found my place,
learned how to behave
in my small familiar universe.
The air up here is thinner.
The light
still penetrates.

Where I never stopped seeking solitude
to decompress, escape.
Digging away
in my small backyard,
a poorly tended garden,
a wild ravine.
Still inhabiting
the imaginary ziggurats
piazzas and arcades
the child once dreamed.

The Anatomy of Feeling
Sept 11 2009


The heart is a muscle
like any other.
Except for its built-in beat,
pounding out the pace
from the stern deck,
while the rest of us
dutifully leans into its oar.
And when aroused, worked-up
hammers-away like war-drums —
swelling-out our chest,
sending pulses of blood
flooding right through us.

While the brain has no sense
of rhythm,
firing-off
in all directions at once.
Even in sleep,
juicing our dreams
with random apparitions,
flashes of absurdity.

So I think erratically,
tend to feel with measured intensity;
the head and the heart
pulling in different directions.
And then, in the end
it’s the gut that decides,
that visceral feeling of right
and wrong,
instinct, and intuition.

When I feel my skin crawl
sphincters pinch,
fists clench
and the hair on my neck
bristle
with fear
and rapture.
When I am raw —
nerve-ends exposed,
jaw dropped,
eyes wide open.

Precambrian
Sept 10 2009


I’m following the path of least resistance
through the woods,
where plants are trampled, roots exposed.
I scoop-up a small grey stone,
take pleasure in its heft
its cool density
its smooth round edges.

From countless centuries
spent on an ancient lake-bed.
Or pebble beach
pummelled by waves,
gently rocked
in long slow swells.
Hard to tell
how it found its way
to this land-locked path,
the forest floor
worn down so fast
by human foot-steps.

It feels warm, now
in my hand,
worrying-away at it.
Like a nun
compulsively fingering her rosaries,
asking forgiveness
giving praise.

I am brief, evanescent
compared to this ancient object.
And in my hasty irreverence
toss it off into the forest,
where it will remain
undisturbed, unchanged,
utterly faithful
to its nature.
To be picked-up again, perhaps
in who knows how many millennia;
as if passed hand-to-hand
reaching across the ages.

Sit-coms From Other Planets
Sept 8 2009


The radio keeps me up-to-date on things.
The date
is 1990,
when I stopped paying attention.
Music was OK, back then —
disco dead
hip-hop, not yet invented.
The news, pretty much the same;
so once I got used
to war, disaster, starvation
I’d stopped hearing, anyway.

The announcer is smooth, breathless;
no less for lost pets
than bomb threats, pandemics.
In sports, someone’s worse, someone’s better.
And I can always look out the window
for weather.

There are acts of God, acts of Man,
and I’m not sure which are more hurtful.
But I know the first are easier,
because we can throw up out hands
proclaim ourselves helpless.
And the last
are too easy to blame
on someone else.

So I set the dial between stations.
They say the static hum
is left-over radiation
from the Big Bang,
the slow descent of the universe
toward absolute zero.
But who knows, perhaps
I’ll tune in to some inter-galactic chatter —
aliens, sending a message to earth;
extra-terrestrial girls
dishing juicy rumours;
sit-coms from other planets
reaching us eons after.

And the news from Utopia,
coming over the air
faint and crackly.
Which is what I’d hoped for, all along —
the perfection of Man
a benevolent God,
from a dim cluster of stars
not all that far-off.

Ground Level
Sept 7 2009


I felt manic, that day.
Or maybe some lunar phase
or alien rays
from the Kuiper Belt
that made me so restless.

So I set out
without maps, or direction.
The city looks different
from ground level
at walking speed.
I follow its steep descents,
dipping-down into the cooler air
left over from dawn.
I step into its street life,
spilling out of storefronts, noisy bistros
in Greektown
Little Italy.
And by a corner market
overflowing the sidewalk,
where the Chinese shopkeeper
guards his stalls.
There’s the smell of home-cooking
from narrow brick houses
where immigrants start out —
masala, souvlaki
cilantro, creole.
And behind closed doors
voices raised,
a girl practicing piano chords.

The concrete is hot,
asphalt even hotter.
Weeds push through the cracks,
and trash
accumulates like flotsam
in the lee of benches, garbage bins.
Which archaeologists will uncover
a few hundred years from now;
learning all about us
from soda cans
tobacco tins.

The walker’s geography
is all about the density of crowds,
the feeling of menace
on bad corners, back alleys.
Time is speed,
so the slower I go
the more there is of it.
And it’s not so much lost in the city
as losing myself here;
a flaneur
a voyeur
a fugitive,
just passing through.

Where I’m as invisible
as lines of gravity
or cosmic rays.
And feel I stand-out
like a comet’s tail
trailing sparks.
Like the full moon
at ground level.

Odds
Sept 5 2009


A bird flew into the car.
As if shot from a gun,
no one saw it coming.
Even at cruising speed
its airy body
— hollow-boned, plumage puffed —
did not dent the metal;
just a smudge
of iridescent feathers,
something wet.
A hawk, I think
wheeling in the tricky breeze,
its telescopic gaze
distracted
by a flicker of prey
in the underbrush.

So our intersection
in time and space
was as improbable as falling frogs.
As the man who took a bullet to the heart,
stopped
by his pocket Bible.
As future lovers
bumping into each other
on a crosswalk at rush hour,
in the tide
of human bodies.

Which happens all the time.
The unlikely, not impossible;
no need of divine intervention.
And all those others we brushed against,
conveniently forgotten.

The bird, of course, instantly died.
Which is how we console ourselves
— “instantly”,
no pain, no warning.
Death, dropped into our path
from a clear blue sky.
Like everything else does
looking back;
as if all of it was planned
to perfection.



This poem is about magical thinking; about the illogic to which the human brain is prone.

Things like selective memory and confirmation bias (paying attention to the things that confirm our preconceptions and prejudice; and conveniently ignoring all the rest.)

Things like the misattribution of cause and effect.

Things like the inductive reasoning we use to make sense, looking back.

Things like our intuitive misunderstanding of probability and dumb coincidence.

Because our genius -- the unique ability of the human brain -- is to seek out patterns, to make meaning. Which, in my opinion (admittedly, the opinion of a rigorous skeptic and confirmed atheist) is what leads to magical thinking, to superstition, to religious faith. And we've all seen where that eventually leads: Crusades, Jihad; the Promised Land.

Make Love
Sept 3 2009


Teenagers with kalashnikovs
make me nervous.
They draft ‘em young, he said.
Hormones and guns, I thought — perfect.
We came armed
with bandannas, water, onions.
Onions?!!
For the tear gas — face covered
by a wet cloth,
breathe-in the onion.
Seriously?, I wondered.
But there I was, looking like all the others
— black hoodie, good runners.

40 years after Woodstock
I think about music, free love
more innocent drugs.
Of course, the adrenaline rush is an upper,
getting high
charging police lines, shouting slogans.
Even half-hearted protests, like mine.
Feeling kind of hopeless,
knowing that we’ll also grow old
get fearful
become accustomed to the status quo.

Before Woodstock
there was King, Gandhi —
bus boycotts,
the unstoppable salt march.
All those long hot summers;
but Jim Crow did eventually end
the British left.
So why not make love
sing folk songs instead?, I mutter;
throat burning
eyes on fire,
running blind.



A pretty obvious poem: about non-violent protest; about civil disobedience. The thing about the onions, by the way, is true. Or so I'm told. (I owe an acknowledgment here to CBC radio's "Dispatches": both for the onion thing, and for the first line (which, I must admit, I took the liberty of "borrowing"!))

Guess-Work
Sept 2 2009


You imagine yourself
the hero of a novel —
getting the girl,
carrying the plot,
now quite sure how it ends
or when.

Although most days
you feel more like a minor character —
the best friend,
someone the narrator
owes a favour.
Certainly not a play,
all costume and dialogue
sweating under heavy make-up.
Because you’re more a listener, than a talker.
And how to explain
all the witty badinage, the bon mots, the clever send-offs
that came to you
a minute too late.

No, more a short story, I think.
Dropped into the middle of things,
trying to figure out who’s who
what just happened
where the real truth lies.
And some great weight
something unsaid
you won’t know ‘til it ends,
if then.
Which is never does, really;
more a sudden stop,
the unresolved ending
that both maddens and exhilarates you
with its endless possibility.

Just a few close friends
a simple plot
an intense love interest,
as intricate and condensed
as poetry,
as spare as a single idea.
And people whose inner life is guess-work,
often even to themselves.

No, you’re not a novel
with its vast universe
its neat conclusive ending.
More a book
of linked short stories,
where it’s just one damn thing after another —
a cryptic plot
that lets you briefly in,
then carries on without you.

Hydraulic Pressure
Aug 31 2009


I’ve been told the past
is bad for me.
That I immerse myself
in its tepid bath-water —
knees poking-out
like 2 pale craggy islands;
the grey grim ring
sloshing-up against enamel;
my goose-bumped skin
marinated nicely.

I talk back
about lessons learned
trajectories into the future;
nostalgia, regret
recrimination.

If only I was a master of Zen,
I could float in this perfect temporal plane
in body temperature water,
conditioned with soothing salts
some healing fragrance;
the isolation chamber
of the ever-forgetful now.

But what they don’t take into account
is the hydraulic pressure of memory.
How it seeps through
cracks in the bedrock.
How it gushes-up
unexpectedly.
How incompressible,
it makes its way out.

Continents are worn away
sand, ground down finer,
and a human body emerges
cleansed —
water sluicing off impervious skin,
long hair streaming,
skin tingling
from the bracing cold.

As I grow old
the future shrinks,
time moves faster.
Without memory
a man’s soul desiccates
turns to dust.
So if I pour out the past,
soon, I would be nothing.